Designing for Pragmatists and Fundamentalists: Privacy Concerns and Attitudes on the Internet of Things

TL;DR

This study investigates user privacy beliefs and attitudes towards IoT systems, classifying users into unconcerned, fundamentalists, and pragmatists, and highlights privacy concerns and design implications.

Contribution

It introduces a user classification based on privacy attitudes in IoT contexts and provides insights into privacy concerns and design heuristics.

Findings

Most users are pragmatists who see privacy as a legal right.

Exchange of personal data to third parties is a major concern.

Perceived risk decreases as perceived utility increases.

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) systems have aroused enthusiasm and concerns. Enthusiasm comes from their utilities in people daily life, and concerns may be associated with privacy issues. By using two IoT systems as case-studies, we examine users' privacy beliefs, concerns and attitudes. We focus on four major dimensions: the collection of personal data, the inference of new information, the exchange of information to third parties, and the risk-utility trade-off posed by the features of the system. Altogether, 113 Brazilian individuals answered a survey about such dimensions. Although their perceptions seem to be dependent on the context, there are recurrent patterns. Our results suggest that IoT users can be classified into unconcerned, fundamentalists and pragmatists. Most of them exhibit a pragmatist profile and believe in privacy as a right guaranteed by law. One of the most privacy concerning aspect is the exchange of personal information to third parties. Individuals' perceived risk is negatively correlated with their perceived utility in the features of the system. We discuss practical implications of these results and suggest heuristics to cope with privacy concerns when designing IoT systems.