The Social Metaverse: Battle for Privacy

Recent advances in technology are rapidly changing the way we interact with the physical world around us. As a result, our digital footprint and digital breadcrumbs are tracked and can reveal not just our identity but also our location, age, shopping preferences, friends, favorite movies, and much more. In the worst case, such tracking may lead to hostile entities coming to know your highly sensitive information such as credit card numbers, social security identity numbers, mother's maiden name, medical history, bank account information, and so on. Social engineering 1 is one of several related ways that this data becomes jeopardized. Furthermore, Internet-connected cameras allow consumers, companies, and government agencies to record animate and inanimate objects in a specific geographic area. Such recordings may be stored in cloud-based storage farms, viewed by humans, or analyzed by machines for various purposes. The information can be gathered and interpreted in multiple ways, such as by surveillance cameras, and can include activity and location inference as well as aggregation and pattern detection.