Security and Privacy Concerns of Pet Tech Users

Abstract

An expanding variety of technologies are being offered to aid with the care of pets. These pet technologies (pet tech) are a rapidly growing industry, introducing new security, privacy, and safety risks to their users. Despite these risks, the security and privacy evaluation of these devices, and their users’ concerns regarding these issues, remain an under-researched field. In this work, we perform a user study of 593 participants across 3 different countries (UK, USA, Germany) to gain an understanding of what technologies are in use, incidents that have occurred or participants believe may occur, and the methods used by participants to protect their online security and privacy and whether they apply these to their pet tech. Our findings highlight that participants do believe that a range of attacks may occur targeting their pet tech. Despite this, they take few precautions to protect themselves and their pets from the possible risks and harms of these technologies.