Latest developments in computer hardware, sensor technologies, and artificial intelligence can make virtual reality (VR) and virtual spaces an important part of human everyday life. Eye tracking offers not only a hands-free way of interaction but also the possibility of a deeper understanding of human visual attention and cognitive processes in VR. Despite these possibilities, eye-tracking data also reveal privacy-sensitive attributes of users when it is combined with the information about the presented stimulus. To address these possibilities and potential privacy issues, in this survey, we first cover major works in eye tracking, VR, and privacy areas between the years 2012 and 2022. While eye tracking in the VR part covers the complete pipeline of eye-tracking methodology from pupil detection and gaze estimation to offline use and analyses, as for privacy and security, we focus on eye-based authentication as well as computational methods to preserve the privacy of individuals and their eye-tracking data in VR. Later, taking all into consideration, we draw three main directions for the research community by mainly focusing on privacy challenges. In summary, this survey provides an extensive literature review of the utmost possibilities with eye tracking in VR and the privacy implications of those possibilities.

翻译：计算机硬件、传感器技术和人工智能的最新发展，使虚拟现实及虚拟空间成为人类日常生活的重要组成部分。眼动追踪不仅提供了一种免提交互方式，还能深入理解用户在虚拟现实中的视觉注意与认知过程。尽管存在这些可能性，但与呈现刺激信息结合后，眼动追踪数据也会暴露用户隐私敏感属性。为探讨这些潜力及潜在隐私问题，本综述首先梳理了2012年至2022年间眼动追踪、虚拟现实与隐私领域的主要研究成果。在虚拟现实眼动追踪部分，我们覆盖了从瞳孔检测、视线估计到离线使用与分析的眼动追踪完整方法论流程；在隐私与安全方面，则聚焦基于眼睛的生物特征认证以及保护用户个人及其虚拟现实眼动追踪数据隐私的计算方法。在此基础上，本文主要围绕隐私挑战为研究社区提出三大方向。总之，本综述对虚拟现实眼动追踪的最大可能性及其隐私影响进行了全面的文献回顾。