CO4804 MSc Project | School of Physical Science and Computing | UCLan |

MSc Project Proposal

Name: Course:
Supervisor (lecturer):

Current Modules (and previous modules if Computing or direct entrant)

The Project Title

Different categories of privacy and problems associated with each category

Project Introduction
In the present world, privacy is a key aspect of every technology and a lot of significance in protecting
the data. But, it is hard to define privacy in an accurate way. There are different definitions of privacy in
different aspects. Those include privacy calculus, application privacy, user-oriented privacy, privacy
paradox, and company-oriented privacy (Gutwirth, et al., 2013). A lot of importance is growing for
privacy-protecting and preserving the value of data. It is hard to understand the attitude and behavior of
privacy as privacy is of different types in nature and it has multiple dimensions. The present project
proposal is to provide a solution for the privacy problems identified and providing a clear definition for
it. The present project helps in overcoming the various challenges presented in privacy taxonomy
including the providing precise definition for privacy and addressing the problems associated with the
collection of information, processing of information, dissemination of information, invasion of
information, and extraction of information. In the past research, the privacy problems are classified into
different types including the privacy of action and behavior, privacy of a human being, privacy of image
and data, privacy of feelings and thoughts, privacy of communication, privacy of space and location, and
group privacy (Camenisch, et al., 2015). The project will provide a clear solution to the problem by
identifying the various concerns of privacy issues including political, economic, legal, and social
concerns. It helps in performing effectively the secondary research through literature review to provide
a clear definition of the privacy problems.

Literature Review
In the present world, the significance of privacy has been increasing into database technology. There are
different definitions of privacy through different regulations in different countries. As per the United
 CO4804 MSc Project | School of Physical Science and Computing | UCLan |

States Privacy Act 1974, privacy principles are categorized into different types including determining
the type of data collected, the use of collected data for legitimate purposes, improving access to own
data, and data gathered in accurate (Barker, et al., 2009). The key associated with the consideration of
privacy issues includes data collector, data provider, data repository, and data users and four key
dimensions in defining privacy including the purpose, granularity, visibility, and retention.
Privacy in software systems development is another taxonomy. The privacy regulations are creating
many challenges for requirement engineers in developing the information systems to different
organizations including healthcare, financial, and government. To ensure the collection of requirements
regarding privacy, the requirement engineers need to enhance knowledge on the different taxonomies of
privacy (Massey & Antón, 2008). The privacy issues are classified into four major categories including
information collection, information dissemination, information processing, and invasion. Information
collection further divided into two types including interrogation and surveillance and information
processing is into exclusion, insecurity, identification, aggregation, and secondary use. Information
dissemination is classified into disclosure, exposure, blackmail, distortion, appropriation, violation of
confidentiality, exposure, and disclosure of data and invasion into decisional interference and intrusion.
The improvements in technology are causing these problems. The privacy feature is showing a lot of
impact on the emerging technologies including second generation biometrics, RFID, human
enhancement technologies and DNA sequencing (Gutwirth, et al., 2013). Each technology is associated
with different sorts of privacy that are helpful in providing protection to every type of data and supporting
the policymakers in understanding the new taxonomy of privacy. It needs to find out the universally
accepted definitions for privacy to avoid the problems presented.
The meaning of privacy has changed in response to new social configurations and technological abilities.
Several disruptions have occurred to the privacy with the rise of technologies like machine learning and
data analytics. The harms to privacy are rising due to lack of privacy with individual controls, deriving
of the sensitive data from the social networking sites, and generation unexpected insights from the data
analysis (Mulligan, et al., 2016). Several contested concepts are associated with the ambiguity presented
in defining the privacy and its meaning in practice as well as theory. The contestedness of privacy is
assessing by several criteria including internal complexities, appraisiveness, and progressive
competition. The taxonomy of information privacy is categorized based on various dimensions. Those
include computational view, content view, and structural view (Skinner, et al., 2006). The computational
view reflects protection levels added to privacy including fragile privacy, computational privacy, and
ideal privacy. The content view is helpful in representing the privacy of things in a collaborative
 CO4804 MSc Project | School of Physical Science and Computing | UCLan |

environment through data privacy, Meta privacy, and identity privacy. The structural view is useful in
reflecting the privacy of entities in a collaborative working environment including individual privacy,
organizational privacy, and group privacy. These views are privacy is associated with various issues in
defining privacy. Privacy is differently classified for mobile applications. The privacy concerns are
categorized based on the three aspects including the type of information, type of impact, and
consequences of an impact. The information is two types including public and private. No controls and
no user verification is required for public data but for private data, unauthorized access, misuse, and
modification are considered (Alotaibi, et al., 2016). Modification, disclosure, denial of access, and
destruction of data are privacy issues based on the impact. Impact consequences classified privacy
problems into embarrassment, legal liability, and violation of confidentiality, financial loss, and
disruption of data.

Method / Proposed Approach

Description of the software methodology: for completing research on the research problem, agile
software methodology is selected. It is effectively used in the completion of the research project and
facilitation of the solution for the research question framed. The main phases recommended by this
methodology such as define the project scope, identification of the project requirements, conducting of
research, collection of the resources, and finalizing the literature review, assessment of the research
findings, and submission of the completed report to the supervisor (Velt, 2018). Evaluation is taken place
at every step of a literature review to test whether the research is aligning with the goals and objectives
of research to ensure the quality of outcomes or any deviation is occurring.
Research Question: The suitable research question for the present research project is to “What are the
Different categories of privacy and problems associated with each category”. This research question is
completed by addressing the below-mentioned research objectives.
 To identify the different types of privacy problems and taxonomy
 To analyze clearly the seven types of privacy in various aspects
 To identify the problems creating due to violation of the privacy principles for data protection
Required Tools and Techniques: The tools and techniques needed for this research project include
secondary research and secondary resources (Saunders, et al., 2009). The secondary research technique
helps in gathering the past research done on the different categories of privacy taxonomy and the
problems associated and performing an effective systematic literature review. Books, journal articles,
website articles, reports, and conference proceedings are the tools used in finding the relevant literature.
 CO4804 MSc Project | School of Physical Science and Computing | UCLan |

Gantt chart: The schedule for this research project is developed using the Gantt chart.
Task or Milestones 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Identifying a research
problem
Creating the research
question and objectives
Research strategy and
research methodology
development
Preparing a proposal for the
project
Collecting the project
requirements
Gathering the past literature
Summarizing the data
Performing data analysis
Final report preparation for
submission
The above Gantt chart clearly shows the schedule created for the research project. It provided information
only about the week starting and week ending but the exact date. A total of 15 weeks of duration is
considered for this research project. Gantt chart is developed to track the status of project activities
against the overall project duration (Gido, et al., 2017). The duration estimated for completion of every
activity is described in the below-mentioned table.
Task or Milestones Starting Date Ending date Duration
Identifying research 05/02/2020 17/02/2020 12 days
problem
Creating the research 18/02/2020 26/02/2020 8 days
question and objectives
Research strategy and 27/02/2020 12/03/2020 15 days
research methodology
development
 CO4804 MSc Project | School of Physical Science and Computing | UCLan |

Preparing proposal for the 13/03/2020 23/03/2020 10 days

project
Collecting the project 24/02/2020 02/04/2020 8 days
requirements

Gathering the past literature 03/04/2020 23/04/2020 20 days

Summarizing the data 24/04/2020 06/05/2020 12 days
Performing data analysis 06/05/2020 12/05/2020 6 days
Final report prepared for 13/05/2020 23/05/2020 10 days
submission

Potential Ethical or Legal Issues

The legal and ethical issues associated with this research project include informed consent, incorrect
usage of the research methodology, the existence of bias, and inappropriate information usage and
reporting, plagiarism, research fraud, data duplication, authorship, and violation of copyrights (Yip, et
al., 2016). Informed consent makes harm to the project if permission is not taken from the participant
while collecting information. Lack of approval from the regulatory bodies’ leads to safety issues in
performing research. The selection of inappropriate research methodology leads to wastage of resources
and time and less quality of research outcomes. Scientific fraud occurs if the information produced in the
report is falsified. Plagiarism is the issue that occurs with direct copying of data from secondary sources
and violation of citation rules for the informed use from the research made by other researchers.
 CO4804 MSc Project | School of Physical Science and Computing | UCLan |

References
Alotaibi, S., Furnell, S. & Clarke, N., 2016. A Novel Taxonomy for Mobile Applications Data.
International Journal of Cyber-Security and Digital Forensics , 5(3), pp. 115-121.
Barker, K. et al., 2009. A Data Privacy Taxonomy. Berlin, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 42-
54.
Camenisch, J., Fischer-Hübner, S. & Hansen, M., 2015. Privacy and Identity Management for the Future
Internet in the Age of Globalisation: 9th IFIP WG 9.2, 9.5, 9.6/11.7, 11.4, 11.6/SIG 9.2.2 International
Summer School, Patras, Greece, September 7-12, 2014, Revised Selected Papers. New York: Springer.
Gido, J., Clements, J. & Baker, R., 2017. Successful Project Management. 7th ed. USA: Cengage
Learning.
Gutwirth, S., Leenes, R., Hert, P. d. & Poullet, Y., 2013. European Data Protection: Coming of Age.
New York: Springer Science & Business Media.
Massey, A. K. & Antón, A. I., 2008. A Requirements-based Comparison of Privacy Taxonomies. s.l.,
IEEE Explore.
Mulligan, D. K., Koopman, C. & Doty, N., 2016. Privacy is an essentially contested concept: a multi-
dimensional analytic for mapping privacy. Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society A
Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences, 374(2083), pp. 1-17.
Saunders, M., Lewis, P. & Thornhill, A., 2009. Research methods for business students. 5th ed. England:
Pearson Education Limited.
Skinner, G., Han, S. & Chang, E., 2006. An Introduction to a Taxonomy of Information Privacy in
Collaborative Environments. Information Management & Computer Security, 14(4), pp. 382-394.
Velt, R., 2018. What are Agile processes and how do they relate to research?. [Online]
Available at: http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/digitalresearch/2018/01/30/agile-processes-research/
[Accessed 02 February 2020].
Yip, C., Han, N.-L. R. & Sng, B. L., 2016. Legal and ethical issues in research. Indian Journal of
Anaesthesia, 60(9), pp. 684-688.