Fran Maier, president of TRUSTe, a San Francisco-based firm that certifies Web sites using privacy best-practices, recently lost her digital camera on a trip to Germany. In this LastWatchdog guest post, Maier describes how the use of her camera by the strangers who ended up with it underscores new privacy risks facing us all.

By Fran Maier

In the past few years the Internet has spread beyond the desktop to phones, cars, cameras, utility meters, even home appliances, or what I refer to as “The Internet of Things.”

A personal story of mine is instructive: while in Germany earlier this year my brand new digital camera went missing. A month later the camera began wirelessly uploading photos to myÃ‚Â Eye-Fi account.

The photos came from an unsuspecting German family who had used my camera without realizing I had previously synced it to upload photos to Eye-Fi. Moreover, the photos were embedded with geo-tags, so I could identify with GPS-precision where this German family had taken the photos.

In this new world of the Internet of Things, a family photo can be much more than that. It may be a sensitive piece of personal data inadvertently shared with a stranger because of insufficient privacy safeguards.

Connecting our everyday devices to the Internet promises greater efficiencies, lower costs and bigger tech profits. Yet, consumer privacy is potentially at stake as the scope of this ecosystem grows. Without a sound privacy framework, sensitive consumer information collected and processed by these Internet-enabled things can put consumers’ reputation and safety at risk.

An individualÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s real-time location — collected by a GPS-enabled car or camera for example — could be dangerous information in the hands of someone who wishes to do the individual harm. Data relating to an individualÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s electricity consumption could result in a bombardment of advertisements from an overzealous marketer.

Privacy is poised to become even more important as the Ã¢â‚¬Å“Internet of ThingsÃ¢â‚¬Â grows and data about the more traditionally Ã¢â‚¬Å“privateÃ¢â‚¬Â part of our lives becomes part of shared or public domains.

Consumers care about privacy. A recent study found that 57 percent of adult Internet users check their reputation on search engines and another study found that 86 percent of adults believe third parties should get permission before uploading photos or videos of them online.

Maintaining privacy in an increasingly public world is possible. Designers and suppliers of these new devices and services must incorporate transparency, accountability and choice into their products.

Transparency means letting consumers know whatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s going on behind the scenes with their information. Accountability means being responsible in the event of misuse or compromise. Choice means giving individuals meaningful and timely decisions to make about how their personal information is used.

Implementation of these three principles will require tailoring according to the individual device and its capabilities. The power of these principles will only grow as more and more devices become connected to the Internet.

September 1st, 2010 | Guest Blog Post | Privacy