Considerations on privacy in the era of digitally logged lives

Abstract

Purpose

The continuous advancements in wearable sensing technologies enable the easy collection and publishing of visual lifelog data. The widespread adaptation of visual lifelog technologies would have the potential to pose challenges for ensuring the personal privacy of subjects and bystanders in lifelog data. This paper presents preliminary findings from a study of lifeloggers with the aim of better understanding their concerns regarding privacy in lifelog data.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, we have collected a visual dataset of 64,837 images from 25 lifelogging participants over a period of two days each, and we conducted an interactive session (face to face conversation) with each participant in order to capture their concerns when sharing the lifelog data across three specified categories (i.e. Private (Only for Me), Semi-Private (Family/Friends) and Public).

Findings

In general, we found that participants tend to err on the side of conservative privacy settings and that there is a noticeable difference in what different participants are willing to share. In summary, we found that the categories of images that the participants wished to be kept private included personally identifiable information and professional information; categories of images that could be shared with family/friends include family moments or content related to daily routine lifestyle, and other visual lifelog data could potentially be made public).

Originality/value

We analysed the potential differences in the willingness of 25 participants to share data. In addition, reasons for being a volunteer to collect lifelog data and how the lifelogging device affected the lifestyle of the lifelogger are analysed. Based on the findings of this study, we propose a set of challenges for the anonymisation of lifelog data that should be solved when supporting lifelog data sharing.

Citation

Gupta, R., Crane, M. and Gurrin, C. (2021), "Considerations on privacy in the era of digitally logged lives", Online Information Review, Vol. 45 No. 2, pp. 278-296. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-04-2018-0119