Assessing Security and Privacy Insights for Smart Home Users

Abstract

Recently, the number and range of Internet-connected devices have increased rapidly, especially due to adoption of the Internet of Things and smart home contexts. As a result, users can find themselves needing to be concerned with the security and privacy of an increasing range of devices. This paper explores the challenges that users can face in understanding and using the related features on their devices. The first element of the work is approached by assessing the user-facing materials (e.g., instruction manuals and online guidance) for a wide variety of smart home devices to determine the extent to which security and privacy aspects (and related features) are highlighted and explained. Having established that the situation is inconsistent, the work proceeds to assess the user experience in practice, by examining how easily a series of security and privacy-related tasks may be accomplished via three alternative smart speakers. The findings highlight further inconsistency and suggest that users could face considerable challenges keeping track of security settings and status of multiple devices across a smart home, and the need for information to be presented in a more coherent form.