ABOUT THE PROJECT
Welcome to the intelligent mobile context- and content-aware networking project. Our goal is to design mobile networking systems for delivering data originally targeted for cellular networks that intelligently leverage users’ mobility and their demanded content. This will allow the improvement of the level of service required by the new wave of smartphones applications. For that, we need to understand the relationship between human context, such as one’s environment and actions, and their generated data traffic.
EXPERIMENT OUTLINE
We built a mobile phone application that periodically samples phone’s information on the mobility (through, e.g., GPS sensor, accelerometer and WiFi/Bluetooth/Cellular environment, connectivity type) and on the data traffic it generates (through, e.g., Internet browser history and applications data consumption). The information collected will be time-stamped and will be periodically sent to the central servers for analysis and visualization. We expect that (1) the collected information will allow us studying the correlation between mobility and content demand patterns and that (2) the results of this analysis will allow us infering the best times and places to transfer content from/to users’ phones location and/or from/to the wireless infrastructure closest to the users’ phones location. Users will be also invited to fill a non-mandatory questionnaire relevant to this study. Our questionnaire collects information about the personality traits and application preferences of people.
We expect that the information collected from quesionnaire will allow us to analyse the correlation between users personality traits and their application preferences and interests. User’s application preferences and interests will be inferred from the Internet browing history and running app information obtained from the MACACO App.
HOW MUCH OF A BURDEN IS THIS TO PARTICIPANTS?
We try to minimize the impact of the application on your life and on your phone. After all, our objective is to be able to collect enough information to succesfully perform our analysis. The application will run in the background unless you deliberately bring it to the front in order to view your activity map, for example. All collection process of the application is optimized for high energy efficiency. In addition, the application does not perform any complicated processing on the phone. The application will perform hourly uploads to two central servers whenever the phone is connected to WiFi, thus it will not incur any additional cellular data plan charges. In case you find that the application is too burdensome, you can simply uninstall it. Uninstallation directions are clearly explained on the project website.
HOW SECURE AND PRIVATE IS THIS?
The data we periodically collect is restricted to connectivity type, location, accelerometer, WiFi/Bluetooth/Cellular environment, personality traits, browser history and applications’ data consumption status. The mobile phone application data collection and on-the-phone storage is designed in accordance with the state-of-the-art best practices in application development. The data collected on the phone is encrypted and inaccessible by any other application installed on the same phone or to any other third party, even in case your phone gets lost or stolen. Moreover, any user’s identity information available in the collected data or in the questionnaire will be completely and irreversibly anonymised before its transfer to the central servers. The on-the-phone collected data and questionnaire data will be transferred via a secure transmission protocol to the central servers. The servers at which the data is stored will be located at a secure location at the University of Toulouse campus and at the INRIA Saclay – Ile de France. Beside these servers, the questionnaire data will be also stored in a server in a secure location at the Univeristy of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI). The anonymised data will be available exclusively to researchers participating in the ERA-NET CHIST-ERA “MACACO: Mobile context-Adaptive Caching for Content-centric networking” and IMU Priva’Mov projects, and only for the purpose of conducting the hereabove described research.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE?
First, you need to be over 18 years old and possessing a phone running Android OS (version 4.1 or higher). Then you can download the app from the Google App Store (just search MACACO) and install it. In order to start your participation you need to agree with our terms that will be clearly presented to you. In case you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us (contact-macacoapp@inria.fr). Once you have installed the application and agreed with the terms, the application will run on your phone. Now you can safely resume using your phone as you did before the application was installed. The application will run quietly in the background. To participate of the questionnaire, just open the MACACO application and click on the questionnaire link from the main menu. A browser will then show the questions on our secure website.
Unfortunately, due to a wide variety of phones, we cannot guarantee that the application will run flawlessly on your specific phone, but we welcome any feedback and will try to fix any application errors as soon as possible.
BENEFITS FOR THE PARTICIPANTS?
The participation is voluntary and there is no monetary reward for your participation. We hope, however, that you will find the application useful as it will provide you with your personal activity map. You will be able to identify the connectivity quality of the last known 3G/4G connection, the last applications generating traffic in upload and download, your total travelled distance since the last upload to our servers, as well as the date of the last upload session. This visualisation might give you a new perspective on your mobile phone usage. Finally, any results coming from this project might result in a scientific publication. We will be happy to share an electronic version (via our website) whenever the copyright laws permit us to do that.
HOW TO WITHDRAW?
If for any reason you want to withdraw from the experiment, you can easily do so by uninstalling the application. Simply follow the rules for uninstalling an android application, and uninstall the application. No further connectivity tests nor data sensing will be performed anymore. In case you withdraw from the experiment, we kindly ask you to email us (contact-macacoapp@inria.fr) with a brief description of your experience. This will help us improve the application for future experiments. We also give you an option to withdraw all or any portion of your data after the experiment. If you want to use this option please email us (contact-macacoapp@inria.fr) your IMEI with “withdrawal” in the subject line or talk to us in person during one of the application demo sessions.
CONTACT/IDENTITY OF THE DATA CONTROLLER
- Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique., a public scientific and technological establishment, having its registered office at Domaine de Voluceau – Rocquencourt – 78153 LE CHESNAY Cedex, France.
We are open to any questions, comments, suggestions about the project. Please use the following email as the primarily means of communication: contact-macacoapp@inria.fr.
Please monitor our news page for any updates on the project, times of demo sessions or times when you can come to chat with the researchers.
Thank you very much for your participation!
