A Privacy Protection Layer for Wearable Devices

The use of wearable devices is growing exceptionally which helps the individuals to track their daily activities, habits, health status, etc. They are be-coming so powerful and affordable that in some cases replace the use of mobile devices. Users are not aware of the extent and quality of the data being collected by these devices and the inherent risk of data security and privacy violation. This research introduces a privacy aware layer built over a sample smartwatch OS to limit user data access through enforcement of user set privacy settings. Since the nature of wearable devices leaves little space for interaction between the device and users, we develop a interface to capture user's privacy preference. Two user studies, one using the Tizen platform and one with the privacy protection layer, are performed to compare its effectiveness.