The Internet of Things is raising a host of concerns over the control of data that could lead to government regulation, but tech companies can rein in those worries on their own if they act fast, according to a former White House technology official.

The kinds of information that connected devices can collect, such as health and fitness data, are more intimate than what consumers are used to sharing on the Web, said Nicole Wong, former U.S. deputy chief technology officer. In addition, it’s harder to make users comfortable with the use of that data, she said.

Any company that gathers data from consumers has to be transparent about what it collects and how it’s used, in order to build trust, Wong said during a panel at the GigaOm Structure Connect conference in San Francisco. Web and mobile products have ways of communicating that message and giving users choices, but many IoT devices don’t, she said. As examples, she cited the lights in a consumer’s home and future monitoring devices that are injected in the bloodstream.

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