In mobile and pervasive computing environments, users may easily exchange information via ubiquitously available computers ranging from sensors, embedded processors, wearable and handheld devices, to servers. The unprecedented level of interaction between users and intelligent environments poses unparalleled privacy challenges. We identify a new attack that can be used to acquire users' private information-using reciprocity norms. By mutually exchanging information with users, an attacker may use a psychological method, the norm of reciprocity, to acquire users' private information. We implemented software to provide a rich shopping experience in a mobile and pervasive computing environment and embedded the reciprocity attack. Our experiments showed that participants were more willing to provide some types of private information under reciprocity attacks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to understand the impact of the norm of reciprocity as an attack in mobile and pervasive computing environments. These human factors should be taken into consideration when designing security measures to protect people's privacy.
The world of Internet is a versatile place, not only as a means of convenience for an individual where quite possibly any mundane task can be taken care of with a click of a button, but also as a hot spot for those who lurk around the corners of the Internet to obtain other people's data. These data can then be used for any number of purposes, from seemingly harmless statistics collection for boosting the sales of a company to the damaging crime of identity theft. In this paper we discuss whether older adults are more careful about keeping their information private than their younger counterparts. We show that the difference in attitudes about keeping identity elements private on the Internet can be attributed to age difference. Our surveys show that older adults in fact place more importance on the privacy of their identity elements and hence may be more apprehensive about sharing information online. Our analyses show that more number of older adults considered their identity elements as being "extremely important" to keep private than their younger counterparts.
No matter how discreet people are they tend to share private information with the people they trust. They also expose information when sharing the information is relevant to the situation or to the requestor. Our study deals with finding out in what contexts people share or do not share certain kind of private information elements. The analyses of our study showed that the context really matters when an individual decides to share information. Based on different contexts and private information, we analyzed what contexts prove effective in getting certain private information elements. It turns out that people trust other people who are close to them and would share private information elements in cases when it is appropriate to expose the information such as helping the trusted person or when they themselves would benefit from the exposure. We conclude that the combination of a trusted person and relevant context is enough to gather sufficient private information about a person, which may be against the owner of the information.
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