Perceived Privacy in Ambient Intelligent Environments

User studies were conducted to explore the different conditions and constraints that affect people's perceived privacy in a networked home environment. Context-aware applications for an extended home environment provided the setting and conditions for inducing privacy-sensitive situations. A presence detection and sharing system was placed in people's homes to conduct a longitudinal field test under realistic conditions. People's preferences for masking and hiding information that is being shared were investigated for different types of applications. The results showed that people use various mechanisms to preserve their social privacy. They share their personal information only with a small group of close relatives and friends and only when there is a clear benefit for them. Maintaining control over the level of information that is being shared, is crucial. Design guidelines were derived from these results to address end-users requirements with regard to perceived privacy.