Ricardo Neisse of the University of Twente has developed a program to help computer users protect themselves against personal data abuse. The program indicates how various applications deal with the user’s privacy.
Ricardo Neisse will defend his doctoral thesis at the University of Twente on 30 March. He conducted research into how applications such as navigation tools, digital tourist guides and social networking apps deal with user privacy. As part of this research, he developed a prototype for a program that gives users insight into the way these applications handle their data. Mobile and desktop applications collect information such as GPS coordinates, contacts and calendar information to adjust their functionality to the user’s individual situation. Neisse: “Often unwittingly, people disclose detailed personal information in exchange for services, for example on Facebook. They see that a friend has taken some sort of quiz and they follow blindly along. The quiz application asks if it may use their personal data from Facebook, and they click on the agree button because they are bound and determined to take the quiz. Users do not know how reliable the services are that collect this information about them. They simply must have faith that these services will respect their privacy preferences. Users may risk identity theft, discrimination or burglary because thieves can troll profiles to find out when users are away on holiday.”
Neisse’s program is still a prototype and it is currently uncertain whether it will be marketed. The program shows which applications are most diligent when it comes to respecting users’ privacy, and it informs users in advance of potential privacy risks that may be associated with a given application. Which tourist guide, for example, takes the greatest care with users’ personal data?
Furthermore, users can specify their privacy preferences for each installed app. For example, people have different preferences regarding the level of confidentiality of their medical data depending upon the setting: they are more sensitive to privacy issues in an office environment than when being treated in a hospital. Neisse’s program takes these considerations into account. Neisse: “A businessman on a trip may be disconcerted about having his pub visits tracked by his employer on Facebook or Foursquare. Or a user may not want an insurance company to keep track of his activities out of concerns regarding potential discriminatory practices on the part of the insurance company”.
Ricardo Neisse conducted his doctoral research at the Information Systems department of the CTIT research institute. He was supervised by Prof. Roel Wieringa, Dr Maarten van Sinderen and Dr Maarten Wegdam.
Note to the press
For further details, or an electronic version of the doctoral thesis entitled ‘Trust and Privacy Management Support for Context-Aware Service Platforms’, please contact the Science Information Officer, Kim Bekmann, +31 (0)53 4892131/+31 (0)6 22436275.
