Physiological Data: Challenges for Privacy and Ethics

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Davis, Keith, Ruotsalo, Tuukka
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Davis, Keith
Ruotsalo, Tuukka
author_facet Davis, Keith
Ruotsalo, Tuukka
contents Wearable devices that measure and record physiological signals are now becoming widely available to the general public with ever-increasing affordability and signal quality. The data from these devices introduce serious ethical challenges that remain largely unaddressed. Users do not always understand how these data can be leveraged to reveal private information about them and developers of these devices may not fully grasp how physiological data collected today could be used in the future for completely different purposes. We discuss the potential for wearable devices, initially designed to help users improve their well-being or enhance the experience of some digital application, to be appropriated in ways that extend far beyond their original intended purpose. We identify how the currently available technology can be misused, discuss how pairing physiological data with non-physiological data can radically expand the predictive capacity of physiological wearables, and explore the implications of these expanded capacities for a variety of stakeholders.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_15272
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Physiological Data: Challenges for Privacy and Ethics
Davis, Keith
Ruotsalo, Tuukka
Computers and Society
K.4.0; K.4.1; K.4.2
Wearable devices that measure and record physiological signals are now becoming widely available to the general public with ever-increasing affordability and signal quality. The data from these devices introduce serious ethical challenges that remain largely unaddressed. Users do not always understand how these data can be leveraged to reveal private information about them and developers of these devices may not fully grasp how physiological data collected today could be used in the future for completely different purposes. We discuss the potential for wearable devices, initially designed to help users improve their well-being or enhance the experience of some digital application, to be appropriated in ways that extend far beyond their original intended purpose. We identify how the currently available technology can be misused, discuss how pairing physiological data with non-physiological data can radically expand the predictive capacity of physiological wearables, and explore the implications of these expanded capacities for a variety of stakeholders.
title Physiological Data: Challenges for Privacy and Ethics
topic Computers and Society
K.4.0; K.4.1; K.4.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.15272