Home Life Data and Children’s Privacy

A researcher has called for new privacy measures and age appropriate design code in building home automation technologies.

20:46 25 September 2018

Dr Veronica Barassi from the University of London has been researching the impact of big data and artificial intelligence on family life. In her report, she has called for new privacy measures and age appropriate design code in building home automation technologies to protect children’s data collected by such devices.

 

In her research called Home Life Data and Children’s Privacy, she said: “Most Virtual Assistants and smart technologies rely on the gathering of biometric data (voice recognition or facial recognition), including the one of children,” Barassi writes in the report. “Yet privacy policies often tend to group this data under the generic umbrella term of ‘biometric data’ and do not differentiate the one of adults from the one of children.”

 

She argued that any information collected from children by devices used inside a home is considered a  personal data. She then calls for the ICO to launch a review on the impact of home life data on children’s privacy and to include concept in future considerations.

 

Barassi’s report is co-signed by Privacy International Executive Director Gus Hosein and supported by Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy.