Does This App Respect My Privacy? Design and Evaluation of Information Materials Supporting Privacy-Related Decisions of Smartphone Users

Over the years, the wide-spread usage of smartphones leads to large amounts of personal data being stored by them. These data, in turn, can be accessed by the apps installed on the smartphones, and potentially misused, jeopardizing the privacy of smartphone users. While the app stores provide indicators that allow an estimation of the privacy risks of individual apps, these indicators have repeatedly been shown as too confusing for the lay users without technical expertise. We have developed an information flyer with the goal of providing decision support for these users and enabling them make more informed decisions regarding their privacy upon choosing and installing smartphone apps. Our flyer is based on previous research in mental models of smartphone privacy and security and includes heuristics for choosing privacy-friendlier apps used by IT-Security experts. It also addresses common misconceptions of users regarding smartphones. The flyer was evaluated in a user study. The results of the study show, that the users who read the flyer tend to take privacy-relevant factors into account by relying on the heuristics in the flyer more often. Hence, the flyer succeeds in supporting users in making more informed privacy-related decisions

We should start thinking about Privacy Implications of Sonic Input in Everyday Augmented Reality!

Evolution in technology causes privacy issues, which are currently under intense discussion. Here, much attention is given to smart cameras, the Internet of Things and the Internet in general, while sonic AR systems are overlooked. Many users, for example, blindfold their laptop cameras with physical layers, but it seems as if no attention is drawn to the sonic hardware that can be hacked just like cameras. In this position paper, we highlight everyday situations that are prone to cause privacy problems through Sonic AR. We then look at current proposals to protect users from camera-caused privacy violations as examples and discuss how they could be adopted to prevent sonic information misuse. We conclude by stating that the current privacy discussion overlooks Sonic AR, although this is a channel across which even more detailed and hence, more sensitive, information can be communicated and misused