If This Context Then That Concern: Exploring users' concerns with IFTTT applets

TL;DR

This study investigates how end users perceive risks associated with IFTTT applets in smart homes, revealing that contextual awareness influences their concern levels and understanding of data leakage risks.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into users' risk perceptions and how contextual factors affect their concerns about IFTTT applet security and privacy.

Findings

Participants' concerns increased when prompted to consider context.

Users demonstrated nuanced understanding of data leakage risks.

Contextual nudges led to deeper risk assessment.

Abstract

End users are increasingly using trigger-action platforms like, If-This-Then-That (IFTTT) to create applets to connect smart home devices and services. However, there are inherent risks in using such applets -- even non-malicious ones -- as sensitive information may leak through their use in certain contexts (e.g., where the device is located, who can observe the resultant action). This work aims to understand how well end users can assess this risk. We do so by exploring users' concerns with using IFTTT applets and more importantly if and how those concerns change based on different contextual factors. Through a Mechanical Turk survey of 386 participants on 49 smart-home IFTTT applets, we found that nudging the participants to think about different usage contexts led them to think deeper about the associated risks and raise their concerns. Qualitative analysis reveals that participants had a nuanced understanding of contextual factors and how these factors could lead to leakage of sensitive data and allow unauthorized access to applets and data.