What does the internet of things mean for our personal privacy?

An illustration picture shows a projection of binary code on a man holding a laptop computer, in an office in Warsaw June 24.
The age of the internet of things brings with it serious questions about personal privacyImage: REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

By 2022, 1 trillion networked sensors will be embedded in the world around us. These connected sensors will contain data about our habits, our activities and our bodies, and there are growing concerns it could be used against us.

In this video for the World Economic Forum's IdeasLab series, Lorrie Cranor, Director of Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, explains how the internet of things could threaten our personal privacy, and what we can do about it.

“In our smart homes we want our fridge to remind us to buy more butter at the store but we don’t want it to tell our health insurers,” she says.

Cranor is developing "personalized privacy assistants" that will help people maintain control over their data – if vendors adopt privacy standards.

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