RE: A Human-Centred Internet of Things

Workshopshed — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 18:36:28 GMT

One thing you've not mentioned is transparency. Perhaps people would not object to objects so much if the providers were more honest and open about what they were doing. It might also be good to give a user a choice to provide less information or deny requests, an information firewall for example.

For example, "Upon first initialisation the Enchanted Cottage will request your location information which will be shared with the Yahoo weather forecast service in order to attain weather information, if you choose to general area or country rather than your exact position the Enchanted Cottage may provide a less accurate forecast."

One thing that always annoys me is "Date of Birth" requests, yes a system wants to ensure I am older than a particular age but does it need my date of birth to do that?

My other gripe is data collection by stealth in the guise of security such as asking for a mobile phone number so that I can do "two factor authentication".