SEAN BALBALE.

Embodied Harms and Inferred Data: Redefining Privacy in Extended Reality

The emergence of Extended Reality (XR) represents a massive shift in human-computer interaction, transitioning data collection standards from seeking active user input to the passive, continuous collection of "behavioral biometrics." While existing privacy frameworks (such as BIPA and GDPR) focus on identification and secrecy, this paper argues that they are structurally obsolete in an environment defined by inference and manipulation. By deconstructing the "inference gap," the paper reveals how immersive architectures bypass cognitive defenses to extract sensitive psychometric traits, ranging from health status to sexual orientation, without user awareness. Through a comparative analysis of the Apple-Meta dichotomy, the study demonstrates that market-led "privacy-by-design" functions primarily as an anti-competitive moat—a "Walled Garden" paradox in which privacy becomes a luxury good, and domination is centralized rather than eliminated. Furthermore, by applying the legal doctrines of "undue influence" and "defect of consent" to the "Proteus Effect," the article establishes that XR environments possess a unique capacity to vitiate user autonomy through subliminal behavioral modification. Therefore, the paper proposes a pivot from the "notice-and-choice" legal paradigm to a "Bodyright" framework. This rights-based model reclassifies biometric data not as a raw material for extraction but as an inalienable extension of the human sovereign, ensuring that the integration of the metaverse does not necessitate the commodification of human consciousness.