Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

User-centered data privacy and utility

Project description

Providing users with improved data privacy and safety

In our rapidly digitalised world, the Internet of Things (IoT) is part of almost all aspects of everyday life. With so many connected devices and information streaming back and forth, privacy has become a serious concern. Most websites and web services collect massive amounts of our data and preferences. Afterwards, they sell them to customers, who, in turn, provide us with personalised ads. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the PrivatePersonalData project aims to offer a solution to this escalating issue with a thorough study of data collection and protection services. The project plans to develop a service that will allow users to decide the amount of data they are willing to provide to websites, thus increasing data security.

Objective

Personal data are constantly collected and shared via web cites, mobile applications like social networking and navigation apps, smart home devices like smart TVs and voice assistants, and IoT devices. Personal data are then monetized to support targeted advertising, personalized services, differential pricing, risk assessment and influencing public opinion. This happens at the expense of privacy and fairness for individuals and the society. To address this, governments around the world are enacting privacy laws, e.g. GDPR (European Union) and CCPA (California). Unfortunately, since profits can be at odds with privacy considerations, industry players have an incentive to circumvent the law. What is more, the technical concepts and associated tools developed so far and used by the laws are neither strong enough nor wide enough in scope. Last, users themselves are conflicted: they enjoy the plethora of personalized services but are alarmed by the loss of their privacy. In this proposal we advocate for a user-centered approach to privacy where each user may dictate how much privacy is willing to trade in exchange for services. We will systematically investigate the efficiency of state of the art privacy mechanisms, both formal, e.g. differential and information theoretic privacy, and data-driven, e.g. generative adversarial privacy, in terms of how well they protect data privacy while maintaining some utility of the obfuscated data and the services that depend upon them. We will do so not only via analysis but also via real world experiments in the context of applications at the forefront of personal data privacy leaks. We will also introduce novel privacy tools for real world use cases which allow users to select the desired level of data privacy and utility of service. Use cases of interest include mobile smartphone data leaks, online tracking via web browsing and apps usage, and user profiling within popular apps like video sharing.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01

See all projects funded under this call

Coordinator

EREVNITIKO PANEPISTIMIAKO INSTITOUTO SYSTIMATON EPIKOINONION KAI YPOLOGISTON
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 169 326,72
Address
PATISION 42
106 82 ATHINA
Greece

See on map

Region
Αττική Aττική Κεντρικός Τομέας Αθηνών
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data
My booklet 0 0