Sensing the City: Designing for Privacy and Trust in the Internet of Things

Abstract The push for ‘smart cities’ is seeing increasing interest and investment in public deployments of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. In many cases, however, these deployments are ‘hidden in plain sight’, with inadequate attention given to the communication of practices regarding the collection, use and sharing of data. This lack of information may impact negatively upon perceptions of trust by the general public, and lead to diminished engagement and comfort with IoT activities. In this paper, we report the results of a survey undertaken in the United Kingdom in November 2018 designed to gain information on perceptions of trust, risk, and informational desires related to public IoT deployments. Findings are expected to contribute to the development of communication practices regarding IoT deployments in smart city environments.