How Paranoid Are You?: Issues in Location Information of Ambient Systems

The prevalence of location-informing devices such as smart phones brings a lot of benefits, such as the ability to find the right services nearby. Nonetheless, there are also concerns that such devices might infringe our privacy and breach security. This paper discusses both viewpoints by outlining how location information might be obtained, what the location information can be used for, as well as the issues and problems that might be faced when location information becomes available too readily or in too much detail. We illustrate these with a case study using an iPhone application that we developed, which allows users to track the last known location of their “contacts” (such as friends or family), and to specify the granularity level of the information they are willing to share with each of their contacts in return

Direct Marketing, Mobile Phones, and Consumer Privacy: Ensuring Adequate Disclosure and Consent Mechanisms for Emerging Mobile Advertising Practices

Advertisers are poised to deliver advertising to cell phones in the U.S. This emerging advertising context is called mobile advertising. It will generate a host of privacy and personal data issues for consumers and for mobile advertisers, mobile phone manufacturers, and mobile carriers. This Article focuses on the existing federal regulatory environment applicable to mobile advertising and consumer privacy, the role of federal administrative agencies that enforce consumer privacy regulation, and the potential for industry selfregulation, particularly privacy policies, to enhance consumer privacy. It assesses the adequacy of the existing federal consumer privacy regulation as well as potential consumer remedies under contract theories and privacy tort laws. Concluding that meaningful disclosure of privacy practices and obtaining adequate consumer consent are essential privacy concerns in mobile advertising, the Article identifies weaknesses in the current regulatory system and offers simple suggestions for regulatory improvements to bolster consumers\u27 privacy protections

Taux : a system for evaluating sound feedback in navigational tasks

This thesis presents the design and development of an evaluation system for generating audio displays that provide feedback to persons performing navigation tasks. It first develops the need for such a system by describing existing wayfinding solutions, investigating new electronic location-based methods that have the potential of changing these solutions and examining research conducted on relevant audio information representation techniques. An evaluation system that supports the manipulation of two basic classes of audio display is then described. Based on prior work on wayfinding with audio display, research questions are developed that investigate the viability of different audio displays. These are used to generate hypotheses and develop an experiment which evaluates four variations of audio display for wayfinding. Questions are also formulated that evaluate a baseline condition that utilizes visual feedback. An experiment which tests these hypotheses on sighted users is then described. Results from the experiment suggest that spatial audio combined with spoken hints is the best approach of the approaches comparing spatial audio. The test experiment results also suggest that muting a varying audio signal when a subject is on course did not improve performance. The system and method are then refined. A second experiment is conducted with improved displays and an improved experiment methodology. After adding blindfolds for sighted subjects and increasing the difficulty of navigation tasks by reducing the arrival radius, similar comparisons were observed. Overall, the two experiments demonstrate the viability of the prototyping tool for testing and refining multiple different audio display combinations for navigational tasks. The detailed contributions of this work and future research opportunities conclude this thesis

Post-mortem digital forensics analysis of the Zepp Life android application

CIIC partially supported this research under the project UIDB 04524/2020 by FCT/MCTES and EU funds under the project UIDB/EEA 50008/2020.This paper studies the post-mortem digital forensic artifacts left by the Android Zepp Life (formerly Mi Fit) mobile application when used in conjunction with a Xiaomi Mi Band 6. The Mi Band 6 is a low-cost smart band device with several sensors that allow for health and activity monitoring, collecting metrics such as heart rate, blood oxygen saturation level, and step count. The device communicates via Bluetooth Low Energy with the Zepp Life application, which displays its data, provides some controls, and acts as a bridge to the Internet. We study, from a digital forensics perspective, the Android version of the mobile application in a rooted smartphone. For this purpose, we analyze the data repositories, namely its databases and XML files, and correlate the data on the smartphone with the corresponding usage of the Mi Band device. The paper also presents two open-source scripts we have developed to ease the task of forensic practitioners dealing with Zepp Life/Mi Band 6: ZL_std and ZL_autopsy. The former refers to a Python 3 script that extracts high-level views of Zepp Life data through the command-line, whereas the latter is a module that integrates ZL_std functionalities within the popular open-source Autopsy digital forensic software. Data stored on the Android companion device of a Mi Band 6 might include GPS coordinates, events and alarms, and biometric data such as heart rate, sleep time, and fitness activity, which can be valuable digital forensic artifacts.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Big data analytics:Computational intelligence techniques and application areas

Big Data has significant impact in developing functional smart cities and supporting modern societies. In this paper, we investigate the importance of Big Data in modern life and economy, and discuss challenges arising from Big Data utilization. Different computational intelligence techniques have been considered as tools for Big Data analytics. We also explore the powerful combination of Big Data and Computational Intelligence (CI) and identify a number of areas, where novel applications in real world smart city problems can be developed by utilizing these powerful tools and techniques. We present a case study for intelligent transportation in the context of a smart city, and a novel data modelling methodology based on a biologically inspired universal generative modelling approach called Hierarchical Spatial-Temporal State Machine (HSTSM). We further discuss various implications of policy, protection, valuation and commercialization related to Big Data, its applications and deployment

Ubiquitous Computing

The aim of this book is to give a treatment of the actively developed domain of Ubiquitous computing. Originally proposed by Mark D. Weiser, the concept of Ubiquitous computing enables a real-time global sensing, context-aware informational retrieval, multi-modal interaction with the user and enhanced visualization capabilities. In effect, Ubiquitous computing environments give extremely new and futuristic abilities to look at and interact with our habitat at any time and from anywhere. In that domain, researchers are confronted with many foundational, technological and engineering issues which were not known before. Detailed cross-disciplinary coverage of these issues is really needed today for further progress and widening of application range. This book collects twelve original works of researchers from eleven countries, which are clustered into four sections: Foundations, Security and Privacy, Integration and Middleware, Practical Applications

Privacy in the internet of Things. Fostering user empowerment fhrough digital literacy

Os dispositivos da Internet das Coisas estão por todo o lado, desde o nascimento da computação ubíqua que se prevê que a vida quotidiana do ser humano contenha milhões de dispositivos que con trolam todos os aspectos da nossa vida. Hoje em dia, temos veículos inteligentes, casas inteligentes, cidades inteligentes, dispositivos vestíveis, entre outros, que utilizam vários tipos de dispositivos e vários tipos de redes para comunicar. Estes dispositivos criam novas formas de recolha e tratamento de dados pessoais de utilizadores e não utilizadores. A maioria dos utilizadores nais nem sequer tem conhecimento ou tem pouco controlo sobre a informação que está a ser recolhida por estes sistemas. Este trabalho adopta uma abordagem holística a este problema, começando por realizar uma revisão da literatura para compilar as soluções actuais, os desa os e as oportunidades de investigação futura. Realizando, em seguida, um inquérito para saber mais sobre o conhecimento geral dos indivíduos acerca da privacidade, da Internet das Coisas e hábitos online e, nalmente, com base na informação recolhida, é proposta uma aplicação móvel que fornece aos utilizadores informações sobre os dispositivos que estão próximos e como proteger os dados que não querem partilhar com estes dispositivos. Os testes com utilizadores revelaram que os participantes val orizam ter acesso a mais informações sobre termos relacionados com a privacidade. Esta aplicação é capaz de detetar que tipo de dispositivos estão próximos, que tipo de dados são recolhidos por esses dispositivos e apresentar opções de privacidade ao utilizador, quando possível, com o objetivo de fornecer aos indivíduos uma ferramenta para tomarem decisões informadas sobre os seus dados privados.Internet of Things devices are everywhere, since the birth of ubiquitous computing, human everyday life is expected to contain millions of devices that control every aspect of our lives. Today we have smart vehicles, smart houses, smart cities, wearables among other things that use various types of devices, and various types of networks to communicate. These devices create new ways of collecting and processing personal data from users, and non-users. Most end users are not even aware or have little control over the information that is being collected by these systems. This work takes a holistic approach to this problem by rst conducting a literature review to compile current solutions, challenges and future research opportunities. Then conducting a survey to learn more about the general knowledge of individuals about privacy, the Internet of Things and online habits, and nally, based on the information gathered, a mobile application is proposed that gives users information about nearby devices, and how to protect the data that they do not want to share with them. User testing revealed that participants valued having access to more information about privacy related terms. This application is capable of detecting what type of devices are nearby, what kind of data is collected by these devices, and displaying privacy options to the user, when it is possible to do so, with the goal of providing individuals a tool to make informed decisions about their private data