Privacy Issues in Wearable Technology: An Intrinsic Review
Open accessAbstract
According to the one of the renowned and Oscar award-winning American actor and film director Marlon Brando who once said - “Privacy is not something that I’m merely entitled to, it’s an absolute prerequisite.” Technology always has continued improvements and innovations in this world and yes! Credit goes to researchers and innovators. Internet of Things (IoT) is one of such gift given by the technology which connects and communicates between devices to exchange information and fulfills the task through means of internet. Wearable technology is the most recent technology of IoT deals with generating lots of human health data (Blood-Oxygen level, step counters, GPS tracking etc.) on cloud. When such health information is stored, there is always inherent rise of risk of getting sensitive data in wrong human hands. The research study carried in this paper sums up the work done by existing researchers on various privacy issues. Through the careful literature survey, it lists some important privacy issues in wearable devices and gives future directions to address them.
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IMU data from wearable devices can be used to execute Backward PIN-sequence inference algorithms to reproduce secret key entries to ATMs and electronic door locks.
“This data can be used to execute Backward PIN-sequence inference algorithms to reproduce secret key entries to ATMs and electronic door locks [131].”
From Review of Wearable Devices and Data Collection Considerations for Connected Health (2021) · cites this paper as [131]
Wearable devices can be exploited to obtain IMU data, including data from accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers on fine-grained hand motions.
“Wearable devices are also exploited to obtain IMU data, including data from accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers on fine-grained hand motions.”
From Review of Wearable Devices and Data Collection Considerations for Connected Health (2021) · cites this paper as [131]
Cited by
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Review of Wearable Devices and Data Collection Considerations for Connected Health
Vijayan, V., Connolly, J. P., Condell, J., McKelvey, N., & Gardiner, P. (2021) · Sensors · doi:10.3390/s21165589 · Cited by 435 · see citing works
“This data can be used to execute Backward PIN-sequence inference algorithms to reproduce secret key entries to ATMs and electronic door locks [131].”
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“Transparency (Kapoor et al. 2020) is a key aspect of data privacy as users should know who can access their data, whether it is a third party or the healthcare provider itself.”
Development and Progress in Sensors and Technologies for Human Emotion Recognition
Pal, S., Mukhopadhyay, S. C., & Suryadevara, N. K. (2021) · Sensors · doi:10.3390/s21165554 · Cited by 115 · see citing works
Roos, L. G., & Slavich, G. M. (2023) · Brain Behavior and Immunity · doi:10.1016/j.bbi.2023.08.008 · Cited by 100 · see citing works
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“Merely password-protecting information is insufficient as hackers devise ever more sophisticated intrusion methods (Kapoor et al., 2020).”
BackgroundA survey on security and privacy issues in IoV
Garg, T., Kagalwalla, N., Churi, P., Pawar, A., & Deshmukh, S. (2020) · International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE) · doi:10.11591/ijece.v10i5.pp5409-5419 · Cited by 60 · see citing works
“The papers mention the attacks dealt with attacks and the solutions to these attacks, that happen in various other fields like healthcare, various technological devices as addressed in [30-31], have also created a chaos in the IoV sector.”
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Liu, L., Pu, Y., Fan, J., Yan, Y., Liu, W., Luo, K., Wang, Y., Zhao, G., Chen, T. P., Poenar, D. P., et al. (2024) · Sensors · doi:10.3390/s24196426 · Cited by 67 · see citing works
“Finally, it needs to be ensured that patients authorize data collection in an informed manner through clear and understandable privacy policies and data usage instructions [89,90].”
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HIAuth: A Hierarchical Implicit Authentication System for IoT Wearables Using Multiple Biometrics
Vhaduri, S., Dibbo, S. V., & Cheung, W. (2021) · IEEE Access · doi:10.1109/access.2021.3105481 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
“However, shallow machine learning models could be implemented on wearables to avoid cases where raw wearable data needs to be sent to the server to authenticate users and thereby overcome the risks of mid-dleman attacks [37].”
BackgroundPrivacy and Regulatory Issues in Wearable Health Technology
Bouderhem, R. (2023) · International Electronic Conference on Sensors and Applications (ECSA) · doi:10.3390/ecsa-10-16206 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
“The biggest challenge is data privacy [3] as health data is sensitive and confidential by nature [4].”
BackgroundChuri, P. P., Pawar, A., & Moreno-Guerrero, A.-J. (2021) · Inventions · doi:10.3390/inventions6030045 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
Self-citationPrabakaran, A., & Rufus, E. (2021) · Sensor Review · doi:10.1108/sr-05-2021-0150 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
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Adattil, R., Thorvald, P., Romero, D., & Tecnológico de Monterrey, M. C. (2024) · International Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management · doi:10.24867/ijiem-2024-1-348 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
“According to the studies revised in this literature review, smartwatches can be hacked, and hand movement information re-produced, and this information can be utilized to retrieve personal or professional security keys [70].”
BackgroundAqueveque, P., Gómez, B., Williams, P. A. H., et al. (2022) · Sensors · doi:10.3390/s22134677 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
“Several exploratory studies indicate that the main concerns about the privacy when using wearable systems include: the lack of control over the collected and shared information, unexpected disclosure of the user identification, and the misuse of the collected data [16,17].”
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“, Wearable Technology in a review study [35], a survey on the Internet of Vehicles [36], and the round complexity problem in the secure multiparty computation protocol [37–39].”
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Bobrova, P. (2025) · The Design Journal · doi:10.1080/14606925.2025.2477927 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
“However, wearables collect large amounts of personal data that are vulnerable to hacking if stored centrally (Kapoor et al. 2020).”
Wearable Technology Hesitancy in Industrial Applications
Strawderman, L. J., Jose, B., Burch, R. F. V., et al. (2025) · IISE Transactions on Occupational Ergonomics and Human Factors · doi:10.1080/24725838.2024.2448686 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
“Within wearables research, privacy is often at the forefront of the discussion (Kapoor et al., 2020; Vaishnavi et al., 2023).”
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Sharma, D. K., Kumar, J. P. S., & Shylaja, K. R. (2025) · Smart innovation, systems and technologies · doi:10.1007/978-981-97-5200-3_35 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
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“Reported reasons for this underutilization include social constraints such as appearance, patient adherence, and a lack of awareness, as well as concerns around privacy, security, system interoperability, and other regulatory barriers [3][4][5][6][7].”
BackgroundPrivacy and Security Issues of IoT Wearables in Smart Healthcare
Mehdi, S. H., Rezazadeh, J., Ampani, R., et al. (2023) · Lecture notes in electrical engineering · doi:10.1007/978-3-031-29078-7_37 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Smart intelligent textiles for monitoring patients with heart conditions
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Security in Bluetooth and Wearable Devices: A Survey
Kumar, H., Bhaidasna, H., & Patel, K. (2025) · International Conference on Sentiment Analysis and Deep Learning (ICSADL) · doi:10.1109/icsadl65848.2025.10933106 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
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“25,26 While privacy concerns were noted as one of the potential reasons for this hesitance, they were not the primary concern reported by the respondents.”
Challenges in Wearable Technology
Jayapal, C., Shree, S. K., Kumar, R., et al. (2021) · International Conference on Advancements in Electrical, Electronics, Communication, Computing and Automation (ICAECA) · doi:10.1109/icaeca52838.2021.9675758
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Hukuki Boyutuyla Tıbbı Cihaz Vasfı Taşımayan Giyilebilir Dijital Sağlık Ürünleri
Seçer, T. (2025) · İstanbul Medeniyet Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Dergisi · doi:10.58733/imhfd.1618585
Wearables in Personalized and Precision Medicine
Almukhtar, Z., & Eappen, P. (2026) · Health informatics · doi:10.1007/978-3-032-23933-4_12
- Authors
- Kapoor, V., Singh, R., Reddy, R., & Churi, P.
- Affiliations
- Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (IN)
- Corresponding author
- Kapoor, Vidhi
- ORCID
- Churi, Prathamesh
- Venue
- SSRN Electronic Journal
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2020
- ISSN
- 1556-5068 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3015594948
- Cited by
- 31
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 1
- Type
- posted content
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › IoT and Edge/Fog Computing
- Keywords
- wearable devices, privacy, Internet of Things, health data, sensitive data protection, cloud storage, data security
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