Concern About Children's Data

Researchers call for new privacy measures for in-home smart devices to safeguard children’s data.

13:19 08 October 2018

A new research carried out by a team of researchers from the University of London has raised concerns about how in-home smart devices, such as smart appliances and monitoring technologies, could be used to illegally gather and share children’s data.

 

Entitled Home Life Data and Children’s Privacy, the report calls for new and tighter privacy measures to make sure that manufacturers are mandated by law to use appropriate design codes in any type of home automation technology.

 

Lead author Dr Veronica Barassi wants UK’s data protection agency to launch a review of what she terms “home life data” and explore how this concept can be put at the heart of future debates about children’s data protection.

 

“Debates about the privacy implications of AI home assistants and Internet of Things focus a lot on the the collection and use of personal data. Yet these debates lack a nuanced understanding of the different data flows that emerge from everyday digital practices and interactions in the home and that include the data of children,” she writes in the report.

 

“When we think about home automation therefore, we need to recognise that much of the data that is being collected by home automation technologies is not only personal (individual) data but home life data… and we need to critically consider the multiple ways in which children’s data traces become intertwined with adult profiles.”