# Internet of Nano-Things, Things and Everything: Future Growth Trends
## 6 Challenges and Impediments to IoT
### Privacy Issues  
The IoT ecosystem can be considered as an abstraction of the real world, hence a form of virtual reality, representing detailed monitored real-world events in the digital realm. Consequently, legal and ethical issues, as well as concerns allied to data protection law and privacy, remain identically valid. These need to be equally considered in the same manner as security and technical issues. Protection and storage of the vast amount of data generated by IoT devices, e.g., using the Blockchain [62; 76] and Big Data [20] concepts respectively, need to be meticulously engineered to ensure the utmost privacy.  
Sensitive data collected by smart IoT devices need to be protected against privacy violations by careful management [86]: currently most devices do not offer any protection. Location information needs to be protected along with its associated metadata to prevent malicious access. This is especially important to stop widespread fear among the public, potentially preventing the wide-scale adoption of IoT. The fear of \"Big Brother-like entities\" is discussed in [87]. This major issue of IoT privacy must be resolved effectively by the IoT community to allay fears from the general populace. [88] also discusses the potential problems that may be created by self-aware IoT devices including in general the following IoT issues: \"data integrity, authentication, heterogeneity tolerance, efficient encryption techniques, secure cloud computing, data ownership and governance, as well as policy implementation and management\" [88]. [87] offers some solutions, such as: building the IoT device with designed inherent privacy; user defined data management and access rights. Data flow transparency is also suggested so that users of IoT devices know exactly who has their data [86]. Complete data management, taking into account policies and the use of enforcing instruments, is proposed by [89], which also discusses the need to adopt the attribute of typifying the data, its ownership details, the span of access, its viability and anonymity.  
Users should also be offered the option to \"opt-out\" [90] if any sensor is deemed to be an untrustworthy node. This is also known as \"right to silence of the chips\" [91]. Proxies may also be used that act as a \"privacy broker\" [92]. The socio-economic and ethical aspects of the usage of IoTs need to be addressed, as pertaining to privacy and not just the technical solutions. This will require education of the users of IoT devices so that they know how their devices gather data and process it as well as updating the current privacy regulations. This is quite an onerous task, requiring determination of the distinction between IoT Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and regular information. The question of whether these regulations should be dictated by governmental agencies or the current self-regulatory agencies is still undecided. The scopes of these regulations also need to be established to cover their territorial jurisdiction and collaboration with civilian partners. The European Commission and the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have already started work on their recommendations [86].