International Research Journal of Education and Technology

 The proliferation of smart devices has revolutionized daily life but introduces significant privacy challenges. [cite: 1, 2, 3, 4] The rapid increase in the use of these devices (e.g., smartphones, smart home devices, wearables) has led to an unprecedented collection of personal data, including sensor data, metadata, and inferred data, often without users' full awareness or explicit consent, raising concerns about how this information is stored, processed, and potentially misused by companies, governments, or malicious actors through practices like background collection, cross-device tracking, and data aggregation. [cite: 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61] These devices are frequently vulnerable to security breaches due to factors such as weak encryption, software flaws, and lack of security updates, creating opportunities for cybercriminals to exploit vulnerabilities through hacking, malware, phishing.