Chatbots: Security, privacy, data protection, and social aspects

• Published in: Concurrency and computation Vol. 33; no. 19
• Main Authors: Hasal, Martin, Nowaková, Jana, Ahmed Saghair, Khalifa, Abdulla, Hussam, Snášel, Václav, Ogiela, Lidia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hoboken Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 10-10-2021
• Subjects: chat; Chatbots; Communication; Communications systems; data protection; Data storage; GDPR; Machine learning; security; Security aspects; Social factors; virtual assistants
• ISSN: 1532-0626; 1532-0634
• DOI: 10.1002/cpe.6426

Summary
Chatbots are artificial communication systems becoming increasingly popular and not all their security questions are clearly solved. People use chatbots for assistance in shopping, bank communication, meal delivery, healthcare, cars, and many other actions. However, it brings an additional security risk and creates serious security challenges which have to be handled. Understanding the underlying problems requires defining the crucial steps in the techniques used to design chatbots related to security. There are many factors increasing security threats and vulnerabilities. All of them are comprehensively studied, and security practices to decrease security weaknesses are presented. Modern chatbots are no longer rule‐based models, but they employ modern natural language and machine learning techniques. Such techniques learn from a conversation, which can contain personal information. The paper discusses circumstances under which such data can be used and how chatbots treat them. Many chatbots operate on a social/messaging platform, which has their terms and conditions about data. The paper aims to present a comprehensive study of security aspects in communication with chatbots. The article could open a discussion and highlight the problems of data storage and usage obtained from the communication user—chatbot and propose some standards to protect the user.