Rational exposure: A game theoretic approach to optimize identity exposure in pervasive computing environments

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.

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Understanding and Minimizing Identity Exposure in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

Zhu

Carpenter

Kulkarni

et al. 2009

Proceedings of the 6th Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking and Services

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Various miniaturized computing devices that store our identities are emerging rapidly. They allow our identity information to be easily exposed and accessed via wireless networks. When identity information is associated with our personal and context information that is gathered by ubiquitous computing devices, personal privacy might be unprecedentedly sacrificed. People, however, have different privacy protection skills, awareness, and privacy preferences. Individuals can be uniquely identified on the basis of only a few identity elements used in combination. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to understand the following issues and their relations: a) what identity elements people think are important; b) what actions people claim to take to protect their identities and privacy; c) privacy concerns; d) how people expose their identities in ubiquitous computing environments; and e) how our rational identity exposure model can help to minimize identity exposure. We build a simulated ubiquitous computing shopping system, called InfoSource. It consists of two applications and our rational identity exposure model. We present our experiments and statistical analysis results. Our data show that exposure decisions depend on participants' attitudes about maintaining privacy, but they do not depend on participants' concerns and claimed actions related to identity exposure. Our RationalExposure model helped participants to minimize unnecessary exposures.Index Terms-game theory, identity management, privacy, ubiqitous computing I.

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Rational exposure: A game theoretic approach to optimize identity exposure in pervasive computing environments

Cited by 3 publications

References 18 publications

Understanding identity exposure in pervasive computing environments

Understanding identity exposure in pervasive computing environments

Reciprocity attacks

Understanding and Minimizing Identity Exposure in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

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