Safeguarding Personal Identifiable Information (PII) after Smartphone Pairing with a Connected Vehicle

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript “Safeguarding Personal-Identifiable Information (PII) after 2 Smartphone Pairing with Connected Vehicle” proposed a VIPR to address privacy and security concerns by eliminating the risks associated with renters leaving personal information unerased in the infotainment systems of rented connected vehicles. The article lacks significant novel contributions. Therefore, it is not recommended for acceptance in its current form. I am writing with some major concerns and suggestions for improvements.

1.      Abstract: Almost 50% of the abstract is based on background and problem statement. The key contribution and methodology of the proposed scheme are not properly discussed. Please make it more compact by adding a very short background, problem statement, novel contribution, and summary of experimental outcomes along with the degree of improvements compared to state-of-the-art.

2.      Introduction: The problem statement is not very clear, and the organization of this section is also poor. The font size of Table 1 should be consistent with the font size and style of the main text. Figures 1, 2, and 3 are not clear. Please maintain consistency in font style and font sizes in the figures and also improve the resolution. Please summarize the key motivation and main contribution by adding a separate subheading.

3.      Related Work: In this section, the authors only incorporated 4 outdated studies from 2017 and 2018. Please incorporate some latest state-of-the-art contributions related to the proposed scheme, summarize their key contributions, and highlight the shortcomings of existing work that you will address through the proposed solution.

4.      Sections 3 and 4 should be part of the literature review as they only describe the theory.

5.      Section 5: The proposed Framework: Why Table 2 is presented in the form of an image? If it is taken from some other work, it should be referenced properly. No clear block diagram and methodology of the proposed scheme are presented and discussed. Please also develop a detailed mathematical model of your scheme to support your design.

6.      The experimental outcomes only present screenshots. Please define performance evaluation metrics and add numerical outcomes of the experiments. Also, it compares the proposed scheme with the state of the art to prove its superior performance.

 

7.      The conclusion is too lengthy, make it short but comprehensive.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Extensive editing of English language required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Considering the integration of CAVs into the intelligent transportation system, the security and privacy of passenger data would be significantly affected. To address this issue, this paper investigates the potential risk of personal information stored in CAVs. The author introduces the VIPR technique to leave personal data retained in the infotainment systems of rented connected vehicles. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method to enhance a safer, more responsible use of connected vehicle technology in society. The logic is clear and the study is meaningful to promote of CAVs.

1.       Some figures are very unclear. Please enhance the quality.

2.       With the rapid development of CAVs, in addition to leaving information on individual vehicles, how to guarantee the safety for information exchange between CAVs would also be important.

3.       The author should add a table to clearly present the risk of the personal information stored in CAVs in the tests.

4.       Besides protecting the renter's data security when returning the vehicle to a rental depot, how can we prevent data breaches in the event of a cyber attack?

5.       Due to the different data types in traditional in-vehicle networks, is it essential to establish different methods for data security?

6.       The background should add more information to describe the rapid development of CAVs, “A MAS-Based Hierarchical Architecture for the Cooperation Control of Connected and Automated Vehicles, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 72, no. 2, pp. 1559-1573, Feb. 2023”.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

There are some comments to improve the paper:

1. The abstract is too general. Please include a clear presentation of the research problem and the outputs of your research results according to the structure: 1) Literature review, 2) Methods,  3) Results, 4) Conclusions.

2. The literature review is too short and does not include enough scientific publications. Please extend it.

3. Please describe your research methodology and provide a clear picture of the research stages.

4. It is recommended in the Discussion section to show which theoretical gaps exist and which are solved in this paper.

5. The discussion section should also include further research directions.

6. By the end of the conclusion, the author must provide their research limitations.

7. Please do not end sections with the Figures. The text should be added after Figure 5 and Figure 6.

8. The list of literature has to be extended to 35 papers, including contemporary ones from 2023-2024.

9. I would recommend to avoid figures in the Introduction part. Please remove figures 1-3.

10. The representation of Table 2 should be improved, including a header about the Table.

11. Section 6 should include a presentation of sub-sections as an introduction for the reader of the section 6 structure.

12. The reference 15 is not cited in the text. Please check this and provide citation.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have reasonably addressed all my concerns. Therefore, I recommend this manuscript for acceptance. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Although some of the issues we proposed have been addressed, the background description is too weak. It should include more discussion on the development of connected autonomous driving and privacy security, some references should be added, such as “A MAS-Based Hierarchical Architecture for the Cooperation Control of Connected and Automated Vehicles, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 72, no. 2, pp. 1559-1573, Feb. 2023,” and “J. Zhou and K. Yang, “A parameter privacy-preserving strategy for mixed-autonomy platoon control,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.15561, 2024.”

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has addressed my concearns well. However, the author information of reference 2 is incorrect. It should be “J. Liang, Y. Li, G. Yin, L. Xu, Y. Lu, J. Feng, T. Shen, and G. Cai, “A MAS-Based Hierarchical Architecture for the Cooperation Control of Connected and Automated Vehicles,” IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 72, no. 2, pp. 1559-1573, Feb. 2023,”

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx