“I would have to evaluate their objections”: Privacy tensions between smart home device owners and incidental users

Camille Cobb, Sruti Sakuntala Bhagavatula, Kalil Anderson Garrett, Alison Hoffman, Varun Nagaraj Rao, Lujo Bauer

Abstract:

Recent research and articles in popular press
have raised concerns about the privacy risks that smart
home devices can create for incidental users—people
who encounter smart home devices that are owned, controlled, and configured by someone else. In this work, we
present the results of a user-centered investigation that
explores incidental users’ experiences and the tensions
that arise between device owners and incidental users.
We conducted five focus group sessions through which
we identified specific contexts in which someone might
encounter other people’s smart home devices and the
main concerns device owners and incidental users have
in such situations. We used these findings to inform the
design of a survey instrument, which we deployed to
a demographically representative sample of 386 adults
in the United States. Through this survey, we can better understand which contexts and concerns are most
bothersome and how often device owners are willing to
accommodate incidental users’ privacy preferences. We
found some surprising trends in terms of what people are
most worried about and what actions they are willing to
take. For example, while participants who did not own
devices themselves were often uncomfortable imagining
them in their own homes, they were not as concerned
about being affected by such devices in homes that they
entered as part of their jobs. Participants showed interest in privacy solutions that might have a technical implementation component, but also frequently envisioned
an open dialogue between incidental users and device
owners to negotiate privacy accommodations.