Security and Privacy Issues in Wearable Devices: An Extensive Review of Threats, Gaps and Future Directions

Abstract

Wearable technology like smartwatches, fitness trackers, and health monitoring devices is becoming a part of everyone's life. Healthcare infrastructure provides convenience and real-time information about personal health. But the one issue that arises is security. The security and privacy of one user's information is at risk. This paper provides a detailed review of wearable devices security, it also concerns serious vulnerabilities at different levels of hardware and software. According to a literature review between 2020 and 2024, major topics like poor authentication, transmission of data without encryption, users were not aware about technology, and lack of adequate legal protection are discussed. The review brings these vulnerabilities that can result in breaches of data transfer, unauthorized activities and misuse of personal data. The results focus on the urgent need for standardization of security measures across different systems, increased regulatory control, and data privacy solutions that majorly concern the user to ensure the security of these wearable devices.