Smart, simple, sincere - Why and how we should rethink connected things in our smart homes

TL;DR

This paper discusses the privacy risks posed by simple sensors in smart home devices and advocates for rethinking their design and deployment to enhance user privacy and trust.

Contribution

It introduces approaches and research projects by the ThingsCon community aimed at rethinking smart connected home devices for better privacy.

Findings

Simple sensors can reveal sensitive home and health data.

Current device designs often lack privacy considerations.

Proposed approaches aim to improve privacy awareness and control.

Abstract

More and more smart connected things and services turn our homes into smart environments. They promise comfort, efficiency and security. These devices often integrate simple sensors, e.g. for temperature, light or humidity, etc. However, these smart but yet simple sensors can pose a sincere privacy risk. The sensor data enables sense-making of home attendance, domestic activities and even health conditions, often a fact that neither users nor developers are aware of or do not know how to address. Nevertheless, not all is lost or evil. This article makes a plea for how we, the ThingsCon community, might rethink smart connected things and services in our homes. We show this in our approaches and research projects that we initiated.