Children Privacy Protection Engine for Smart Anthropomorphic Toys

A smart anthropomorphic toy is defined as a device consisting of a physical toy component in a humanoid form that connects to a computing system with online services through networking and sensory technologies to enhance the functionality of a traditional toy such as Mattel’s Hello Barbie and Cognitoys Dino. Many studies found that anthropomorphic toys serve a purpose, as children trusted such designs and felt at ease disclosing private information. Online privacy for children has been a great concern in this environment, particularly when the child’s private information is involved and can be potentially shared with other parties. Privacy can result in physical safety of child user, e.g., child predators. While parents strive to ensure their child’s physical and online safety and privacy, there is no standardized child protection engine for parental control in this paradigm. Parental control is a feature in a smart toy for the parents to restrict the content the children can provide to the toy. The main objective of this research is on developing a privacy-aware context data model for smart toys to support a standardized child protection framework with parental controls.

Faculty Supervisor:

Patrick Hung

Student:

Partner:

Universidade de São Paulo

Discipline:

Computer science

Sector:

University:

University of Ontario Institute of Technology

Program:

Globalink Research Award