Privacy and Security in Eye Tracking

Abstract

As eye tracking systems become integrated with emerging technology platforms such as Virtual and Augmented Reality displays individuals’ gaze data will be captured and recorded at an unprecendented scale. While this rich and powerful data enables new applications that improve our quality of life, it also introduces novel security and privacy considerations. Our research proposes technology solutions that address these considerations.

Current work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under award ID #1566481 .


Outreach and Dissemination

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PROJECTS

Privacy-Preserving Gaze Data Streaming in Immersive Interactive Virtual Reality: Robustness and User Experience

“Privacy-Preserving Gaze Data Streaming in Immersive Interactive Virtual Reality: Robustness and User Experience”, Wilson, Ethan and Ibragimov, Azim and Proulx, Michael and Tetali, Sai Deep and Butler, Kevin and Jain, Eakta. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2024).
  • Paper (preprint)
  • Dataset
  • Bibtex entry
    @article{wilson_privacy_2024,
    title={Privacy-Preserving Gaze Data Streaming in Immersive Interactive Virtual Reality: Robustness and User Experience},
    author={Wilson, Ethan and Ibragimov, Azim and Proulx, Michael and Tetali, Sai Deep and Butler, Kevin and Jain, Eakta},
    journal={IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
    volume={},
    number={},
    year={2024},
    pages={},
    doi={}
    }

Privacy-preserving datasets of eye-tracking samples with applications in XR

“Privacy-preserving datasets of eye-tracking samples with applications in XR”, David-John, Brendan and Butler, Kevin and Jain, Eakta. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (2023).
  • Paper (PDF)
  • Supplementary (pseudo-code)
  • IEEE DOI
  • Bibtex entry:
    @ARTICLE{davidjohn2023tvcg,
    author={David-John, Brendan and Butler, Kevin and Jain, Eakta},
    journal={IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
    title={Privacy-preserving datasets of eye-tracking samples with applications in XR},
    year={2023},
    volume={},
    number={},
    pages={1-11},
    doi={10.1109/TVCG.2023.3247048}}

 

For Your Eyes Only: Privacy-preserving eye-tracking datasets

“For Your Eyes Only: Privacy-preserving eye-tracking datasets”, David-John, Brendan and Butler, Kevin and Jain, Eakta. ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications (ETRA 22).
  • Paper (PDF)
  • Poster (PDF)
  • Supplementary Material (PDF)
  • Dataset
  • Bibtex entry:
    @inproceedings{davidjohn2021etra,
    author={David-John, Brendan and Butler, Kevin and Jain, Eakta},
    title={For Your Eyes Only: Privacy-preserving eye-tracking datasets},
    booktitle={ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications},
    year={2022},
    }

Let’s SOUP up XR: Collected thoughts from an IEEE VR workshop on privacy in mixed reality

teaser-figure

“Let’s SOUP up XR: Collected thoughts from an IEEE VR workshop on privacy inmixed reality”, Brendan David-John, Diane Hosfelt, Kevin Butler, Eakta Jain, VR4Sec: 1st International Workshop on Security for XR and XR for Security (2021).

  • Paper (PDF)
  • Slides
  • Bibtex entry:
    @inproceedings{davidjohn2021soups,
    author={David-John, Brendan and Hosfelt, Diane and Butler, Kevin and Jain, Eakta},
    title={Let’s SOUP up XR: Collected Thoughts From an IEEE VR Workshop on Privacy in Mixed Reality},
    booktitle={VR4Sec: 1st International Workshop on Security for XR and XR for Security},
    pages={1–6},
    year={2021},
    }

A Privacy-Preserving Approach to Streaming Eye-Tracking Data

“A privacy-preserving approach to streaming eye-tracking data”, Brendan David-John, Diane Hosfelt, Kevin Butler, Eakta Jain, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG 2021) Special Issue on IEEE VR.
  • Paper (preprint)
  • Slides
  • Dataset (ZIP)
  • Bibtex entry:
    @article{davidjohn2021privacy,
    title={A privacy-preserving approach to streaming eye-tracking data},
    author={David-John, Brendan and Hosfelt, Diane and Butler, Kevin and Jain, Eakta},
    journal={IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
    year={2021},
    publisher={IEEE}
    }

Let It Snow: Adding pixel noise to protect the user’s identity


“Let It Snow: Adding pixel noise to protect the user’s identity”, Brendan John, Ao Liu, Lirong Xia, Sanjeev Koppal, Eakta Jain, Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA ’20 Adjunct)
  • Paper (preprint)
  • Bibtex entry:
    @inproceedings{john2020snow,
    title={Let It Snow: Adding pixel noise to protect the user’s identity},
    author={John, Brendan and Liu, Ao and Xia, Lirong and Koppal, Sanjeev and Jain, Eakta},
    booktitle = {Adjunt Proceedings of the 12th ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research \& Applications},
    series = {ETRA ’20 Adjunct},
    year = {2020},
    location = {Stuttgart, Germany},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-7135-3},
    pages = {1–3},
    articleno = {43},
    numpages = {3},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3379157.3390512},
    doi = {10.1145/3379157.3390512},
    publisher = {ACM},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    keywords = {privacy, eye tracking, iris recognition},
    }

The Security-Utility Trade-off for Iris Authentication and Eye Animation for Social Virtual Avatars

“The Security-Utility Trade-off for Iris Authentication and Eye Animation for Social Virtual Avatars”, Brendan John, Sanjeev Koppal, Sophie Jörg, Eakta Jain, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG 2020) Special Issue on IEEE VR.
  • Paper (preprint)
  • Slides
  • Bibtex entry:
    @article{john2020security,
    title={The Security-Utility Trade-off for Iris Authentication and Eye Animation for Social Virtual Avatars},
    author={John, Brendan and J{\”o}rg, Sophie and Koppal, Sanjeev and Jain, Eakta},
    journal={IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
    volume={26},
    number={5},
    pages={1880–1890},
    year={2020},
    publisher={IEEE}
    }

EyeVEIL: Degrading Iris Authentication in Eye Tracking Headsets

“EyeVEIL: Degrading Iris Authentication in Eye Tracking Headsets”, Brendan John, Sanjeev Koppal, Eakta Jain. In Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications (ETRA’19).
  • Paper (preprint) (PDF – 1,115KB)
  • Poster
  • Bibtex entry:
    @inproceedings{John2019,
    author = {John, Brendan and Koppal, Sanjeev and Jain, Eakta},
    title = {EyeVEIL: Degrading Iris Authentication in Eye Tracking Headsets},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 11th ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research \& Applications},
    series = {ETRA ’19},
    year = {2019},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-6709-7},
    location = {Denver, Colorado},
    pages = {37:1–37:5},
    articleno = {37},
    numpages = {5},
    url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3314111.3319816},
    doi = {10.1145/3314111.3319816},
    acmid = {3319816},
    publisher = {ACM},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    keywords = {eye tracking, iris recognition, mixed reality, security},
    }

Differential Privacy for Eye Tracking Data

“Differential Privacy for Eye Tracking Data”, Ao Liu, Lirong Xia, Andrew Duchowski, Reynold Bailey, Kenneth Holmqvist, Eakta Jain. In Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications (ETRA’19).
  • Paper (preprint) (PDF – 1,201KB)
  • Bibtex entry:
    @inproceedings{Liu2019,
    author = {Liu, Ao and Xia, Lirong and Duchowski, Andrew and Bailey, Reynold and Holmqvist, Kenneth and Jain, Eakta},
    title = {Differential Privacy for Eye-tracking Data},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 11th ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research \& Applications},
    series = {ETRA ’19},
    year = {2019},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-6709-7},
    location = {Denver, Colorado},
    pages = {28:1–28:10},
    articleno = {28},
    numpages = {10},
    url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3314111.3319823},
    doi = {10.1145/3314111.3319823},
    acmid = {3319823},
    publisher = {ACM},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    keywords = {differential privacy, eye-tracking, heatmaps, privacy-utility tradeoff},
    }

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