Event

Information Studies Seminar Series: "Children's Privacy Protection Engine for Smart Anthropomorphic Toys." Guest speaker Dr. P. Hung

Thursday, September 24, 2015 11:00to12:30
Room 106, School of Information Studies, 3661 Peel, Rm. 106, Montreal, CA

Join us for a McGill School of Information Studies (SIS) Seminar Series talk with guest speaker Dr. Patrick C. K. Hung on privacy protection related to data collected from children's smart toys.

ABSTRACT

A toy is an item or product intended for learning or play, which can have various benefits to childhood development. Children’s toys have become increasingly sophisticated over the years, with a growing shift from simple physical products to toys that engage the digital world. Toy makers are seizing this opportunity to develop products that combine the characteristics of traditional toys such as dolls and stuffed toys with computing software and hardware. A smart anthropomorphism toy is defined as a device consisting of a physical toy component in the humanoid form that connects to a computing system through networking and sensory technologies to enhance the functionality of a traditional toy. Many studies found out that anthropomorphic designs resulted in greater user engagement. Children trusted such designs serve a good purpose and felt less anxious about privacy. While there have been many efforts by governments and international organizations such as UNICEF to encourage the protection of children’s data online, there is currently no standard privacy-preserving framework for mobile toy computing applications. Children’s privacy is becoming a major concern for parents who wish to protect their children from potential harms related to the collection or misuse of their private data, particularly their location. This talk presents the related research issues with a video demo.


BIO

Patrick C. K. Hung is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Business and Information Technology in University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada. Patrick has been working with Boeing Research and Technology on aviation services-related research with a patent on mobile network dynamic workflow system. He is an Honorary International Chair Professor at National Taipei University of Technology and a Visiting Professor at University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. In addition, he was an Adjunct Professor at Wuhan University, a Visiting Professor at the Shizuoka University and University of Aizu in Japan, a Guest Professor in University of Innsbruck in Austria, University of Trento and University of Milan in Italy. Before that, he was a Research Scientist with Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia as well as he worked as a software engineer in industry in North America. He is a founding committee member of the IEEE International Conference of Web Services (ICWS), IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC), and IEEE BigData Congress (BigData Congress). He is also an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, and a Coordinating Editor of the Information Systems Frontiers.

This talk is free and open to all. Please be sure to arrive early to secure a seat.

 

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