DESCRIPTION
While practical and convenient, smart home devices tend to have troublesome security vulnerabilities and questionable privacy policies. Devices have cheap security measures like default passwords and opt-in encryption services, and personal data is often shared with third parties and collected in circumstances one would not expect.
Owners can take actions to protect their privacy and secure their devices. However, most owners do unexpectantly little. Some owners state that they simply trust the manufacturers or that they have nothing to hide (Lau, et al., 2018), while others lament that they do not know how to protect themselves (Zheng, et al., 2018).
Not much research has gone into what people know about the security and privacy of their smart devices or what they might misconceive. The current findings imply that owners lack knowledge about security measures and privacy policies. Specifically, research into mental models of smart devices find that these models tend to be about simplistic functions, suggesting that owners could have lacking awareness of certain potential security issues (Zeng, et al., 2017). Additionally, some people seem to underestimate the amount of data collected by their devices, although the amount of underestimation differs per device (Al-Ameen, et al., 2021).
This research project is about examining the knowledge gaps and the misconceptions people have about the security or the privacy of their smart devices. What do people know and not know about the security and privacy of their smart devices? What misbeliefs do they have? These are questions this projects would like to explore.
Keywords
Smart home IoT, Security, Privacy, Knowledge, Misconceptions
Research question
Example research questions:
- What are common security or privacy misconceptions for smart devices?
- What are prevalent knowledge gaps of smart device security or privacy?
- Who is more prone to have knowledge gaps and misconceptions?
- Do people with more misconceptions and knowledge gaps take less protective action?
TYPE OF Research
The research question will be addressed in an online survey study.
DATA-ANALySIS
The data will be analyzed with analysis programs such as Rstudio or SPSS.
INFORMATION
Please contact Lynn Weiher (l.weiher@utwente.nl) when you are interested in this assignment. The assignment is open to one to two students.
Literature
Al-Ameen, M. N., Chauhan, A., Ahsan, M. M., & Kocabas, H. (2021). A look into user’s privacy perceptions and data practices of IoT devices. Information & Computer Security, 29(4), 573-588. https://doi.org/10.1108/ICS-08-2020-0134
Frik, A., Nurgalieva, L., Bernd, J., Lee, J., Schaub, F., & Egelman, S. (2019). Privacy and security threat models and mitigation strategies of older adults. In Fifteenth symposium on usable privacy and security (SOUPS 2019) (pp. 21-40).
Lau, J., Zimmerman, B., & Schaub, F. (2018). Alexa, are you listening? Privacy perceptions, concerns and privacy-seeking behaviors with smart speakers. Proceedings of the ACM on human-computer interaction, 2(CSCW), 1-31.
Malkin, N., Deatrick, J., Tong, A., Wijesekera, P., Egelman, S.,Wagner, D., 2019. Privacy attitudes of smart speaker users. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2019, 250–271. https://doi.org/10.2478/popets-2019-0068
Zeng, E., Mare, S., & Roesner, F. (2017). End user security and privacy concerns with smart homes. In thirteenth symposium on usable privacy and security (SOUPS 2017) (pp. 65-80).
Zheng, S., Apthorpe, N., Chetty, M., & Feamster, N. (2018). User perceptions of smart home IoT privacy. Proceedings of the ACM on human-computer interaction, 2(CSCW), 1- 20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3274469