Confidentiality Of Personal Information Research Articles

Balancing privacy concerns in the adoption of Location-Based Services: an empirical analysis

Location-Based Services (LBSs) bring unprecedented mobility and personalisation value to nomadic customers and hence have great commercial potential. However, the commercial potential of LBS is obscured by consumer's privacy concerns whereby the LBS provider can misuse confidential personal information and in extreme circumstances jeopardise an individual's social life or finances. Drawing on the privacy calculus theoretical perspective, we study both pull-based and push-based LBS to provide a comprehensive view of LBS adoption. The results reveal that consumer's privacy concerns influence their intention to adopt directly in case of push-based LBS and indirectly through performance expectancy in case of pull-based LBS.

Ethical Aspects of Human Placental Perfusion: Interview of the Mothers Donating Placenta

Within the EU project “NewGeneris” human placental perfusion has been used for assessing in utero fetal exposure to food carcinogens. Within the work package of ethical aspects of the research, we were interested in the way mothers who donated placentas for perfusion perceived their participation in the study. Thematic interviews were conducted with 25 mothers who had donated the placenta for placental perfusion studies. The main themes covered during the interviews were recruitment for placental perfusion studies, informed consent, risks and benefits, handling and confidentiality of personal information and societal meaning of the placental perfusion studies. Data were analysed qualitatively using thematic content analysis. Mothers, when rightly informed about the purpose of the placental perfusion study were very interested in the study and supported the use of the placenta for such purpose. Overall, this study revealed several points of particular interest in placental perfusion studies. First, the recruiters’ involvement with and commitment to the research project and its ethical conduct were of utmost importance for handling the informed consent procedure correctly. Second, the timing of the recruitment was important since it considerably affected the understanding of the given information, women in labour being obviously less receptive to such information. Third, the trust of participants depended on the multidisciplinary collaboration between the researchers and hospital personnel and this trust was enhanced by a thorough, objective and fair informed consent procedure.

The New Arizona Date Security Breach Law: A Step in the Right Direction, But Unlikely to Prevent Identity Theft or Compensate Consumers

Identity theft is a growing problem because of the increased electronic storage of personal information. Confidential personal information is available to anyone with the desire and skill to hack into a computer system. In addition, businesses routinely allow employees to maintain customers' personal information on laptops, compromising the stored information when the laptops are stolen or misplaced. When thieves obtain personal information they usually resell it, and the buyers use the information to assume a person's identity for pecuniary gain. The effects of identity theft are serious. In addition to financial harm, identity theft can impair a victim's credit history. Data security breaches also impose costs on businesses, including replacement of credit cards, lost customers, declining consumer confidence in electronic transactions, damage to reputation, and even a drop in stock price. Moreover, there is cost to all of society because people concerned about identity theft will avoid activities that require the disclosure of personal information; for example, internet banking and registering to vote. The law has taken different approaches, with mixed results, to prevent data security breaches and compensate consumers for the harm caused by the breaches and the subsequent identity theft. This Comment focuses on the new Arizona data security-breach law, Arizona Revised Statutes section 44-7501, and discusses its shortcomings in curbing identity theft and protecting consumers. Part II defines and discusses the identity theft problem in Arizona. Part III argues that a strong data security-breach law is necessary because criminal and civil remedies have failed to curb identity theft or to compensate consumers. Part IV introduces section 44-7501, discusses its shortcomings in protecting consumers, and presents recommendations to strengthen the Arizona law.

Real-time control systems secured communication

As demands on privacy, personal data and in general secure and responsible dealing with confidential personal information are growing, the need for their protection grows as well. When confidential data are being transported, there is a high risk of their stole and misuse or complete loss. That's why a question of secure communication is one of the most actual topics of a present day. It's not just information technologies problem, but since embedded and automation devices are more and more sophisticated, able to use for example internet technologies, this question also concerns the area of automation and control systems. Especially in complex distributed control and measurement systems that supports remote control, internet visualization, wireless transfers or remote data acquisition, it is the primary goal to ensure the most secure and reliable communication. This work deals with securing the communication of embedded systems connected over public networks and internet. To fulfill that, PKI technologies are used. Benefits of secured communication are employed in Guardian system, patient monitoring platform developed at Technical University of Ostrava.

Choosing Donors Wisely. Reducing the Risk of Transfusion-Transmissible Viral Infection through Blood Donor Selection: The Australian Experience 2000–2006.

Selection of voluntary donors who are at low risk of transfusion-transmissible viral infection (TTVI) is central in maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Evaluation of the effectiveness of donor selection and the dynamics of the process may offer opportunities to further improve transfusion safety. We analysed the impact of donor selection on the relative prevalence of TTVIs in all allogeneic donations in Australia between July 2000 and June 2006. We further explored the donor selection process where donors were found to have a TTVI despite pre-donation screening. Donors repeat reactive for a TTVI were offered counselling and confidential interview where potential infective risk exposures were reassessed, and disclosure of risk exposures at initial screening re-evaluated. 6,274,144 donations were received during the study period and tested for HCV, HBV, HIV, and HTLVI/II; of these, 1449 (0.02%) were repeat reactive for at least one TTVI and were discarded. Twenty-nice (2.5%) positive donors were not contactable or declined interview, giving an interview participation rate of 98.5%; all 1449 positive donors are included in the prevalence analysis. This comprised 605 (42%) positive for Hepatitis B; 818 (56%) positive for Hepatitis C; 18 (1%) positive for HIV; and 20 (1%) positive for HTLVI/II. The prevalence of HBV in accepted donors was at least 50 times lower than that in the Australian population; for HCV, 75 times lower; and HIV for 350 times lower. In new donors the prevalence was at least 6 times lower for HBV, 12 times lower for HCV and 140 times lower for HIV. In 1158 of 1420 donors interviewed (80%) an infective risk was identified; 509 donors (44%) had more than one risk. The most common identified were country of birth and parental ethnicity (N=682, 26% of reported risks); tattoos/piercings (N=448, 18%); and intravenous drug use (N=302, 12%). Other common risks included surgery or endoscopy (201 donors, 8%); receipt of blood products (N=144, 6%); and other blood contact, such as following sporting injuries (N=232, 10%). High-risk sexual contacts were uncommon risk exposures, but disproportionately significant in donors with HIV. Many of the identified risk exposures were temporally remote. The relative importance of risks varied significantly between TTVIs. In 302 cases (21%) disclosure of the identified risk exposures at pre-donation screening would have resulted in donor deferral. The proportion of positive donations which would not have been accepted had exposures been reported accurately was 3% for HBV; 35% for HCV; 39% for HIV; and 5% for HTLVI/II. Factors influencing non-disclosure included the temporal remoteness or isolated nature of the exposure, belief behaviour was not high-risk (eg, that needles were not shared during drug use), and perceptions that laboratory testing rendered disclosure unnecessary. Concerns about privacy or confidentiality of personal information were uncommon. These findings affirm the effectiveness of current stringent donor selection criteria in reducing the residual risk of TTVI. Ongoing donor education regarding the importance of risk disclosure is required. The development of screening criteria for use with emerging infections also offers continued opportunity for further improvements in transfusion safety.

Secure and auditable agent-based e-marketplace framework for mobile users

Mobile agent based e-marketplace auction trading requires a secure and auditable system with a solid framework to support it. In investigating the requirements, it transpired that there is a lack of such a standardised framework. While mobility helps in avoiding network latency, particularly in increasing fairness in applications with bounded response times such as trading of auctions, it nevertheless raises issues concerning security, privacy and trust in protecting personal confidential information, managing and regulating legitimate trading and payment processing. These issues are of paramount importance and must be taken into consideration when designing a framework for modelling an auditable e-marketplace for mobile users. This also implies that there is also an underlying need to provide mobile users with simple, transparent and unobtrusive user interface. This paper proposes a framework that accommodates these requirements through protocol scenarios and highlight further research work that need to be performed.

Confidential registration in health services: randomised controlled trial

Background: Human rights legislation safeguards the privacy and dignity of patients. Objective: To assess the effectiveness in terms of patient assessed privacy of confidential registration. Design: Randomised controlled trial. Setting:...

PDA Security

PDAs are attractive devices for health care providers because they offer easy access to reference resources. They also may be used to store protected health information (PHI), confidential business information, and confidential personal information. PDA users need to be aware of their obligation to protect this information, particularly in light of HIPAA regulations. Suggestions for ways to secure data stored on PDAs include protecting the PDA from loss and theft, protecting the PDA with a password, disabling infrared ports, encrypting data, restricting the PDA to either professional or personal use, following hospital policies and procedures for PDA use, backing up information, sanitizing the PDA when it is replaced, purchasing anti-viral software, and purchasing a PDA with built-in security functions. Several security software options are also presented.

Online Privacy Policies and Diffusion Theory Perspectives

ABSTRACT The use of the Internet and related technologies in data sharing and new product development, which essentially serves as a foundation for the management of data flows for strategic IT, are rapidly expanding. The innovation clusters and frameworks to characterize recent e-commerce sites' privacy policies to ensure confidentiality of personal information have been under increasing academic inquiries. An application of Rogers' (1995) diffusion of innovation or technology concepts as applied to the Internet is used to develop several models of e-commerce related security and privacy concerns. One possible solution discussed is the strategic leveraging of a consortium model, providing for governmental assurances of privacy and security. Unfortunately, the current e-commerce model has no governing body to represent the consumer and e-tailer in terms of privacy and security issues so critical to the continued growth and success of the Internet.

Cyber Terrorism: A Study of the Extent of Coverage in Computer Science Textbooks

Introduction Terrorism is the most pressing national security issue facing the United States and its allies around the world. This became shockingly clear on September 11, 2001 and promises to be a long-lasting threat requiring a total commitment by the United States to eliminate terrorist organizations wherever they are found. Terrorism is an old problem, and the word dates to France's Reign of Terror in 1793-94 (Garrison, 2003). The United States State Department has defined as violence against noncombatants for the purpose of influencing public opinion (Council on Foreign Relations [CFR], n.d.). The former deputy chief of the CIA Counterterrorist Center has identified four elements that are common to all acts of (Vatis, 2001). Acts of are: (1) premeditated and not simply acts born of rage, (2) political and designed to impact political structure, (3) targeted at civilians and civilian installations, and (4) conducted by ad hoc groups as opposed to national armies. The war on is sure to result in attacks against US assets launched by terrorist groups, nation-states that provide support for terrorists, and hackers who sympathize with the terrorists (Vatis, 2001). The term cyber terrorism was coined to characterize computer-based attacks against an adversary's assets. It takes place were cyberspace and converge (Denning, 1999). Though these attacks occur in cyberspace, they still exhibit the four elements common to all acts of terrorism: (1) premeditated and not simply acts born of rage Cyber terrorist attacks are premediatated and must be planned since they involve the development or acquistition of software to carry out an attack. (2) political and designed to impact political structure Computer is an act that is intended to corrupt or completely destroy a computer system (Galley, 1996). Cyber terrorists are hackers with a political motivation, their attacks can impact political structure through this corruption and destruction. (3) targeted at civilians and civilian installations Cyber terrorist attacks often target civilian interests. Denning (2000a) qualifies as an attack that results in violence against persons or property, or at least causes enough harm to generate fear. (4) conducted by ad hoc groups as opposed to national armies Cyber is sometimes distinguished from warfare or information warfare, which are computer-based attacks orchestrated by agents of a nation-state. Cyber warfare is another term that is often used to describe various aspects of defending and attacking information and computer networks in cyberspace, as well as denying an adversary's ability to do the same (Hildrith, 2001). Cyber warfare and information warfare employ information technology as an instrument of war to attack an adversary's critical computer systems (Hirsch, Kett, & Trefil, 2002). Winn Schwartau (1994) has proposed three categories for classifying information warfare: (1) Personal Information Warfare, (2) Corporate Information Warfare, and (3) Global Information Warfare. Personal Information Warfare involves computer-based attacks on data about individuals. It may involve such things as disclosing or corrupting confidential personal information, such as those in medical or credit files. Corporate Information Warfare may involve industrial espionage or disseminating misinformation about competitors over the internet. Global Information Warfare is aimed at a country's critical computer systems. The goal is to disrupt the country by disabling systems, such as energy, communication or transportation. Another level of politically motivated computer attacks is often referred to as hacktivism--a combination of political activism and hacking. The intent in hacktivism is to disrupt normal operations but not cause serious damage (Denning, 2000b). …

Confidentiality and security of clinical information in mental health practice

‘Security holds the key’ was the title of a newspaper article concerned with e-commerce (D. Sumner-Smith, The Sunday Times, 6 February, 2000, p. 3.13). However, it applies just as readily to the health sector. The need to safeguard the confidentiality of information that patients share with clinicians is as fundamental as the principle of consent. This issue has come to the fore in the context of the rapid developments and applications of information and communication technologies within society in general and within the health sector in particular. There are also changing societal expectations regarding access to information, confidentiality and disclosure. The emerging scenarios present significant challenges in relation to the traditional methods used to deal with the privacy and confidentiality of personal information (Anderson, 1995). In addition to the impact of new technologies, consideration also needs to be given to the impact of changes in health care organisation and practice, for example multidisciplinary and multi-agency working. Mental health services are in many respects at the vanguard of these changes, where the ideals of community care, shared care and seamless care depend fundamentally on good communication and information sharing. Failures in communicating information, particularly across sectoral boundaries, have led to significant problems in patient care, as revealed in several recent enquiries into homicides (Northamptonshire Health Authority & Northamptonshire Social Services, 1999)

Large datasets: common uses and caveats.

Increasingly, large collections of pre-existing data are being used to analyze the occurrence, burden, and health care resources directed to the management of various skin diseases. This article discusses a number of different types of large datasets along with their common uses. Various concerns about the use of this information are also discussed. Although large datasets provide significant statistical power with readily available data, there are significant concerns, particularly regarding data quality and statistical analysis. Readers need to be aware of how an investigator has addressed these issues. Furthermore, the profession needs to be cognizant of very legitimate public concerns regarding confidentiality of personal information.

Confidentiality: The loss of a concept?

Abstract The article is an examination of the shifting point of balance at which social workers are prepared to make private information available to other agencies—an availability more easily made today than it was 10 years ago. The paper looks particularly at the Cleveland Report, DHSS child abuse procedures, and the 1988 Department of Health circular Personal Social Services: Confidentiality of Personal Information, and tries to draw conclusions that offer future pointers for contemporary social work practice.