Unfolding Concerns about Augmented Reality Technologies: A Qualitative Analysis of User Perceptions

Augmented reality (AR) greatly diffused into the public consciousness in the last years, especially due to the success of mobile applications like Pokémon Go. However, only few people experienced different forms of augmented reality like head-mounted displays (HMDs). Thus, people have only a limited actual experience with AR and form attitudes and perceptions towards this technology only partially based on actual use experiences, but mainly based on hearsay and narratives of others, like the media or friends. Thus, it is highly difficult for developers and product managers of AR solutions to address the needs of potential users. Therefore, we disentangle the perceptions of individuals with a focus on their concerns about AR. Perceived concerns are an important factor for the acceptance of new technologies. We address this research topic based on twelve intensive interviews with laymen as well as AR experts and analyze them with a qualitative research method

Augmented Reality in Information Systems Research: A Systematic Literature Review

Augmented Reality (AR) is one of the most prominent emerging technologies recently. This increase in recognition has happened predominantly because of the success of the smartphone game Pokémon Go . But research on AR is not a new strand of literature. Especially computer scientists investigate different technological solutions and areas of application for almost 30 years. This systematic literature review aims at analyzing, synthesizing and categorizing this strand of research in the information systems (IS) domain. We follow an established methodology for conducting the literature review ensuring rigor and replicability. We apply a keyword and backward search resulting in 28 and 118 articles, respectively. Results are categorized with regard to the focus of the research and the domain of the application being investigated. We show that research on user behavior is underrepresented in the current IS literature on AR compared to technical research, especially in the domains gaming and smartphone browsers

How Privacy Concerns and Trust and Risk Beliefs Influence Users’ Intentions to Use Privacy-Enhancing Technologies - The Case of Tor

Due to an increasing collection of personal data by internet companies and several data breaches, research related to privacy gained importance in the last years in the information systems domain. Privacy concerns can strongly influence users’ decision to use a service. The Internet Users Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC) construct is one operationalization to measure the impact of privacy concerns on the use of technologies. However, when applied to a privacy enhancing technology (PET) such as an anonymization service the original rationales do not hold anymore. In particular, an inverted impact of trusting and risk beliefs on behavioral intentions can be expected. We show that the IUIPC model needs to be adapted for the case of PETs. In addition, we extend the original causal model by including trust beliefs in the anonymization service itself. A survey among 124 users of the anonymization service Tor shows that they have a significant effect on the actual use behavior of the PET

Open Materials Discourse: Re-Evaluating Internet Users’ Information Privacy Concerns: The Case in Japan

This paper provides the survey materials used to collect the data for the conceptual replication of the Internet Users’ Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC) model by Malhotra et al. (2004). The replication paper (Pape et al., 2020) used awareness, collection and control as constructs for the second order construct of IUIPC, as well as risk and trusting beliefs from the original paper. Instead of intended behavior the self-developed construct of willingness to share was used. Altogether more than 9,000 data points were collected. This paper provides additional materials and details on the participants, and the Japanese survey questions along with an English version for readers who are unfamiliar with Japanese. We hope that the additional information and in particular the Japanese questions provide some background on our study which will allow others a better understanding of our research and to make use of the questions themselves

Re-Evaluating Internet Users’ Information Privacy Concerns: The Case in Japan

To expand the understanding of privacy concerns in the digital sphere, this paper makes use of the Internet Users’ Information Privacy Concerns (IUIPC) model by Malhotra et al. (2004). The lack of empirical studies conducted in East-Asian societies makes it difficult, if not impossible, to shed light on multi-cultural differences in information privacy concerns of internet users. Therefore, we collected data of more than 9,000 Japanese respondents to conduct a conceptual replication of the IUIPC model. For our research goal, we re-assess the validity and reliability of the IUIPC model for Japan and compare the results with internet users\u27 privacy concerns in the USA. Our results indicate that the second-order IUIPC construct, measured reflectively through the constructs awareness, collection, and control, is reliable and valid. Furthermore, three out of the five structural paths of the IUIPC model were confirmed for our Japanese sample. In contrast to the original study, the impact of IUIPC on trusting beliefs, as well as that of trusting beliefs on risk beliefs was negligible. Statistically significant differences in the IUIPC could only be found for the covariate gender

A Two-Pillar Approach to Analyze the Privacy Policies and Resource Access Behaviors of Mobile Augmented Reality Applications

Augmented reality (AR) gained much public attention since the success of Pokémon Go in 2016. Technology companies like Apple or Google are currently focusing primarily on mobile AR (MAR) technologies, i.e. applications on mobile devices, like smartphones or tablets. Associated privacy issues have to be investigated early to foster market adoption. This is especially relevant since past research found several threats associated with the use of smartphone applications. Thus, we investigate two of the main privacy risks for MAR application users based on a sample of 19 of the most downloaded MAR applications for Android. First, we assess threats arising from bad privacy policies based on a machine-learning approach. Second, we investigate which smartphone data resources are accessed by the MAR applications. Third, we combine both approaches to evaluate whether privacy policies cover certain data accesses or not. We provide theoretical and practical implications and recommendations based on our results

Integrating Privacy-Enhancing Technologies into the Internet Infrastructure

The AN.ON-Next project aims to integrate privacy-enhancing technologies into the internet’s infrastructure and establish them in the consumer mass market. The technologies in focus include a basis protection at internet service provider level, an improved overlay network-based protection and a concept for privacy protection in the emerging 5G mobile network. A crucial success factor will be the viable adjustment and development of standards, business models and pricing strategies for those new technologies

Every Large Point Set contains Many Collinear Points or an Empty Pentagon

We prove the following generalised empty pentagon theorem: for every integer $\ell \geq 2$, every sufficiently large set of points in the plane contains $\ell$ collinear points or an empty pentagon. As an application, we settle the next open case of the "big line or big clique" conjecture of K\'ara, P\'or, and Wood [\emph{Discrete Comput. Geom.} 34(3):497--506, 2005]

Effect of chemical modifications on modulation of gene expression by duplex antigene RNAs that are complementary to non-coding transcripts at gene promoters

Antigene RNAs (agRNAs) are small RNA duplexes that target non-coding transcripts rather than mRNA and specifically suppress or activate gene expression in a sequence-dependent manner. For many applications in vivo, it is likely that agRNAs will require chemical modification. We have synthesized agRNAs that contain different classes of chemical modification and have tested their ability to modulate expression of the human progesterone receptor gene. We find that both silencing and activating agRNAs can retain activity after modification. Both guide and passenger strands can be modified and functional agRNAs can contain 2′F-RNA, 2′OMe-RNA, and locked nucleic acid substitutions, or combinations of multiple modifications. The mechanism of agRNA activity appears to be maintained after chemical modification: both native and modified agRNAs modulate recruitment of RNA polymerase II, have the same effect on promoter-derived antisense transcripts, and must be double-stranded. These data demonstrate that agRNA activity is compatible with a wide range of chemical modifications and may facilitate in vivo applications

NuMA Overexpression in Epithelial Ovarian Cancer

Highly aneuploid tumours are common in epithelial ovarian cancers (EOC). We investigated whether NuMA expression was associated with this phenomenon