JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Complying with privacy perceptions is essential when processing personal information for research. Before adopting new automated tools that capture such data, it is crucial to understand and address the privacy concerns of the research subjects that are to be studied. Privacy as contextual integrity emphasizes understanding contextual sensitivity in an information flow. In this paper, we explore privacy perceptions in image-based dietary assessments. This research field lacks empirical evidence on what will be considered as privacy violations when exploring trends in long-running studies. Prior studies have only classified images as either private or public depending their basic content. An assessment and analysis are thus needed to prevent unwanted consequences for privacy when designing systems for dietary assessment using food images.

Objective:

This work investigates common perceptions of computer systems using food images for dietary assessment. The study delves on perceived risks and data sharing behaviours.

Methods:

We investigate these perceptions using an online study (n=105). We analyse these perceptions along with perceived risks in sharing dietary information with third parties.

Results:

We find that understanding the motive behind the use of data increases its chances of sharing with a social group.

Conclusions:

We highlight various privacy concerns that can be addressed during the design phase. A GDPR-compliant system design will increase participants’ and stakeholders’ trust in an IBDA system. Innovative solutions are needed to reduce the intrusiveness of a continuous assessment. Meta-data sharing differs as knowing what the data is being used for, increases the chance of it being shared.