Consenting to Internet of Things Across Different Social Settings

TL;DR

This paper explores how users consent to IoT devices in various social settings, presenting initial pilot study results and outlining plans for a larger study to model consent probabilities based on device and context features.

Contribution

It introduces a pilot study on user consent in social IoT environments and proposes a probabilistic model to predict consent in diverse settings.

Findings

Initial pilot study results on consent behavior at a friend's house party

Outline of a larger study to understand consent across different social environments

Development of a probability distribution model for user consent based on device and context

Abstract

Devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) are rapidly becoming ubiquitous across modern homes, workplaces, and other social environments. While these devices provide users with extensive functionality, they pose significant privacy concerns due to difficulties in consenting to these devices. In this work, we present the results of a pilot study that shows how users consent to devices in common locations at a friends house in which the user is a guest attending a party. We use this pilot study to indicate a direction for a larger study, which will capture a more granular understanding of how users will consent to a variety of devices placed in different social settings (i.e. a party house owned by a friend, an office space for the user and some 40 other employees, the bathroom of a department store). Our final contribution of this work will be to build a probability distribution which will indicate how probable a given user is to consent to a device given what sensors it has, where it is, and the awareness and preferences of each user.