PrivXR: A Cross-Platform Privacy-Preserving API and Privacy Panel for Extended Reality
Chris Warin, Dominik Seeger, Shirin Shams, Delphine Reinhardt · 2024
Extended Reality (XR) technologies are rising in popularity and affordability, while including more sensors for new features at each new generation, thus becoming increasingly more pervasive. While this shapes up interconnected experiences across Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and Virtual Reality (VR) devices, it also introduces privacy threats for users, especially related to their sensible biometric data. Despite various propositions for privacy-enhancing technologies tailored to XR in academia, there are still not enough options for end-users to be informed about privacy risks and act upon them. Therefore, we present a work-in-progress solution, consisting of a user-friendly privacy panel, and a cross-platform privacy-preserving Application Programming Interface (API). Our solution aims to provide more awareness about potential privacy risks in XR, while enabling users to define access to XR features, better protecting their privacy by modifying the input data. Eventually, we aim for this work to become a viable choice for end-users of current and future generations of XR devices—especially in the context of cross-platform, multi-user experiences, which are expected to become the norm.