The Impact of Device Type, Data Practices, and Use Case Scenarios on Privacy Concerns about Eye-tracked Augmented Reality in the United States and Germany

2025-09-11

AI Summary

This study addresses the underexplored privacy concerns associated with eye-tracking technology in augmented reality (AR), specifically examining how device type, data processing practices, application contexts, and user demographics influence perceived privacy risks. Method: Four crowdsourced online surveys were conducted in the United States and Germany, employing quantitative statistical analysis to assess users’ privacy concerns regarding AR eye-tracking data. Results: Users expressed greatest concern about third-party access to eye-tracking data and the potential inference of sensitive personal information; U.S. participants exhibited significantly lower privacy concerns than their German counterparts; and device form factor (e.g., glasses vs. head-mounted displays) showed no statistically significant effect on privacy perceptions. Contributions: (1) A novel evaluation framework for privacy risks inherent in AR eye-tracking data; (2) Empirical validation of cross-cultural differences in privacy attitudes; and (3) A challenge to the prevailing assumption that device morphology determines privacy perception—providing evidence-based guidance for privacy-aware AR system design.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Bias, Fairness & Privacy
• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Privacy & Security
• Machine Learning: Privacy

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User privacy protection in personalized systems
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web

Abstract

Augmented reality technology will likely be prevalent with more affordable head-mounted displays. Integrating novel interaction modalities such as eye trackers into head-mounted displays could lead to collecting vast amounts of biometric data, which may allow inference of sensitive user attributes like health status or sexual preference, posing privacy issues. While previous works broadly examined privacy concerns about augmented reality, ours is the first to extensively explore privacy concerns on behavioral data, particularly eye tracking in augmented reality. We crowdsourced four survey studies in the United States (n1 = 48, n2 = 525) and Germany (n3 = 48, n4 = 525) to understand the impact of user attributes, augmented reality devices, use cases, data practices, and country on privacy concerns. Our findings indicate that participants are generally concerned about privacy when they know what inferences can be made based on the collected data. Despite the more prominent use of smartphones in daily life than augmented reality glasses, we found no indications of differing privacy concerns depending on the device type. In addition, our participants are more comfortable when a particular use case benefits them and less comfortable when other humans can consume their data. Furthermore, participants in the United States are less concerned about their privacy than those in Germany. Based on our findings, we provide several recommendations to practitioners and policymakers for privacy-aware augmented reality.

Problem

• Examining privacy concerns for eye-tracked augmented reality data
• Assessing impact of device types and data practices on privacy
• Comparing privacy concerns between United States and Germany users

Innovation

• Crowdsourced surveys in US and Germany
• Explored eye tracking privacy concerns
• Compared device types and cultural differences