Personalised privacy assistant app being developed
Posted on: 11/Jul/2016 2:47:36 PM
Researchers of the Carnegie Mellon University, or CMU, in the US are currently developing a personalised privacy assistant app that can simplify the task of setting permissions for your smartphone applications.
Speaking about this, the researchers said, That is a job that requires well over a hundred decisions, an unmanageable number for the typical user. The privacy assistant can learn the user`s preferences and quickly recommend the most appropriate settings, such as with which app to share the user`s location, or contact list. In the field test, people accepted almost 80 per cent of the recommendations made by the privacy assistant and, at the end of the study, these people indicated they were more comfortable with their privacy settings than users who did not have a privacy assistant.
It is clear that people just cannot cope with the complexities of privacy settings associated with the apps they have on their smartphones. And it’s not just smartphone apps. The growing number of sensors and other smart devices that make up the so-called internet of things will impact privacy and make it even more challenging for users to retain control over their data and how it is being used.
During the study, the app recommended settings for the users, which they could accept or reject. Say the researchers, But eventually a privacy assistant may prove trustworthy enough to automatically make many of those decisions. Previous studies have shown that most people are unaware of many of the privacy settings for their apps, or are not comfortable with the permissions they consented to at some earlier point.
Data collected by the researchers has shown people`s preferences can generally be organised in a small number of categories or profiles. These profiles differ based on people`s willingness to grant different types of applications access to their information.
The researchers said, The privacy assistant can determine to which of these categories a person belongs. Machine learning techniques enable the assistant to analyse a user`s response to a small number of questions focusing on the particular apps they have on their phones.
For the study, 23 people did not use the privacy assistant, whereas 49 people did. Researchers said that those using the privacy assistant adopted almost 80 per cent of its privacy recommendations. Both groups were then sent daily privacy nudges, messages alerting them to what may be surprising behaviour by apps. Such a nudge might note that a certain app or set of apps had shared their location with a third party multiple times. Over the course of the study, participants changed only 5 per cent of the settings that had originally been recommended to them by the personal privacy assistant. Our findings suggest that the personal privacy assistant does a good job of properly profiling each user and that its recommendations based on those profiles were useful.
