"You Shouldn't Need to Share Your Data": Perceived Privacy Risks and Mitigation Strategies Among Privacy-Conscious Smart Home Power Users

Authors

Anna Lenhart, University of Maryland - College Park
Sunyup Park, University of Maryland - College Park
Michael Zimmer, Marquette UniversityFollow
Jessica Vitak, University of Maryland - College Park

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Source Publication

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

Source ISSN

2573-0142

Original Item ID

DOI: 10.1145/3610038

Abstract

Fueled by Internet-of-Things technologies and spanning a wide range of sensors, speakers, and cameras, smart homes promise to make our lives easier and automate routine tasks. From speakers to security cameras, smart home devices (SHDs) answer our questions, monitor our home environment, and conserve energy. They also collect significant data, ranging from on/off commands to audio and video data, and they do this in some of our most private spaces. In this paper, we explore the privacy risks associated with SHDs by focusing on privacy-conscious smart home power users--those who spend significant time and money to research, install, and integrate devices throughout their homes and engage in advanced device and network management strategies to mitigate privacy concerns. Drawing on data from 10 focus groups with 32 privacy-conscious power users, we identify the key privacy risks they perceive from this technology, as well as how they mitigate those risks through increasingly complex strategies. Our findings reveal that navigating the technical landscape that makes up the smart home environment--including what data is collected, what options are available for managing or restricting data flows, and who has access to data collected by SHDs--is complex and often confusing, even for people who spend significant time researching devices and integration options. We use these findings to argue for further development of tools that are transparent, easy to use, and aligned with the privacy needs of a diverse userbase.

Comments

Accepted version. Published in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction Vol. 7, (2023). DOI. © 2023 ACM. Used with permission.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Lenhart, Anna; Park, Sunyup; Zimmer, Michael; and Vitak, Jessica, ""You Shouldn't Need to Share Your Data": Perceived Privacy Risks and Mitigation Strategies Among Privacy-Conscious Smart Home Power Users" (2023). Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications. 92.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/comp_fac/92