Defending My Castle

Abstract

Home is a person's castle, a private and protected space. Internet-connected devices such as locks, cameras, and speakers might make a home "smarter" but also raise privacy issues because these devices may constantly and inconspicuously collect, infer or even share information about people in the home. To explore user-centered privacy designs for smart homes, we conducted a co-design study in which we worked closely with diverse groups of participants in creating new designs. This study helps fill the gap in the literature between studying users' privacy concerns and designing privacy tools only by experts. Our participants' privacy designs often relied on simple strategies, such as data localization, disconnection from the Internet, and a private mode. From these designs, we identified six key design factors: data transparency and control, security, safety, usability and user experience, system intelligence, and system modality. We discuss how these factors can guide design for smart home privacy. CCS CONCEPTS • Security and privacy → Privacy protections;

Owning and Sharing

“…Prior work showed that sharing devices in multi-user smart homes is based on social relationships and sharing rules [19,21,34,65]. We show that not only rules for sharing, but also for guest interaction exist.…”

“…Visitors mainly expressed reluctance due to wanting to keep their requests private or not share their voice data. We suggest that this behaviour is influenced by their privacy perceptions, which in turn seem to be influenced by two factors identified by Yao et al: 1) perceived norms, namely their social relationship to the owner and their perceived trust towards the IPA provider, and 2) their privacy-seeking behaviour of protecting themselves by avoiding the device [65]. Most participants declared they would be comfortable using an IPA for basic entertainment purposes only and owners would find this an acceptable behaviour.…”

“…Geeng and Roesner also found a lack of knowledge or abilities in co-users, an imbalance of control, varying preferences, or device inflexibility can provoke unease at different points in time [21]. The relationship between the owner and any co-occupants influences how these tensions are resolved, how sharing is coordinated and what kind of protection mechanisms are employed [19,21,34,65].…”

“…Visitors have been found to understand less of the risks of smart devices and have even less control in smart homes [67]. In their study, Yao et al found that privacy perceptions of smart home bystanders are shaped through norms, device awareness and their own privacy seeking behaviour [66], they propose a privacy design to address privacy concerns [65,66]. Kraemer et al found that most users are happy to share their devices with guests and accommodate their wishes, but need to balance politeness and security [34].…”

Customer Privacy Concerns as a Barrier to Sharing Data about Energy Use in Smart Local Energy Systems: A Rapid Realist Review

“…Fewer participants expressed privacy concerns around data ownership, which was around having control over the data collection and its use, as well as having the option to delete data [57]. Participants were less trusting of profit-making third-party organizations to work in the participants' interests, but did not seem to be overly concerned with the value of the data they shared.…”