Smartphone Privacy in Citizen Science

Group signature schemes enable anonymous-yet-accountable communications. Such a capability is extremely useful for modern applications such as smartphone-based crowdsensing and citizen science. A prototype named GROUPSENSE was developed to support anonymous-yet-accountable crowdsensing with SRBE in Android devices. From this prototype, an Android crowdsensing application was implemented to support privacy in citizen science. In this thesis, we will evaluate the usability of our privacy-preserving crowdsensing application for citizen science projects. An in person user study with 22 participants has been performed showing that participants understood the importance of privacy in citizen science and were willing to install privacy-enhancing applications, yet over half of the participants did not understand the privacy guarantee. Based on these results, modifications to the crowdsensing application have been made with the goal of improving the participants' understanding of the privacy guarantee.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science and Applications

Department dc:contributor.department

Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Roth, Hannah Michelle

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Yao, Danfeng (Daphne)

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Wang, Gang Alan
• Luther, Kurt

• Citizen Science
• Security
• Android Mobile Software
• Crowdsourcing
• Crowdsensing
• Groupsensing
• Privacy Guarantee
• Group Signature Scheme
• User Study

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:11467

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/78360