Privacy preservation for personalised services in smart spaces

Abstract

Context-awareness in pervasive smart spaces exposes intuitively useful services. These services implicitly annotate users' personal information with contextual cues to individualise experiences. Mobile terminals have positioned most domestic and business users as potential consumers of these services. To alleviate the inconveniences of small screens, compact keyboards and users' limited attention span, personalised services tend towards transparency. As the services become more transparent requiring less user intervention, the more personal and context information they solicit. Richer contextual and deeper personal information facilitates better automation and adaptation. Unfortunately, transparent soliciting, acquiring and handling of personalisation constructs raises privacy concerns. We argue that, privacy policies enforced through reputable authority preserves and safeguards compromises regarding personal information. To this we propose a Privacy Policy Enforcement Authority to monitor and regulate service adherence to policy stipulations. Addressed concerns are; disclosures, retention, use and repurpose of personalisation attributes.