Managing Personal Information: A Telco Perspective

Ewelina Szczekocka , Justyna Gromada , Agata Filipowska , Piotr Jankowiak , Piotr Kałużny , Arnaud Brun , Jean Michel Portugal , Jacopo Staiano

Abstract

While paving the way for novel and exciting application scenarios, the foreseen large-scale deployment of connected objects poses a number of ethical concerns which, if not timely addressed, can potentially dampen the full potential of this drive. In particular, issues related to privacy and control of the data collected by sensors can undermine users’ trust, hence hindering several application scenarios due to the perceived sensitivity of the data required. In this work, we describe a first prototype which addresses such issues by granting users full ownership and control of the data their sensors produce. The proposed solution - the Personal Information Management platform - aims at breaking the data silos, allowing the spontaneous emergence of ad-hoc and decentralized communities and applications, and gaining user trust by providing transparency on personal data and its usage with a user-centric approach. Furthermore, we provide a sample use case application based on the platform, enabling social activities of a community supported by data from objects belonging to Internet of Things and personal information inferred from this data. Finally, we discuss current limitations and elaborate on future developments of the described technology.