Do Your Lights Silently Talk About You? Understanding the Privacy Space for Personal Connected Objects
11 July 2016
Privacy is a major obstacle preventing the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT). As more connected objects become integrated in daily lives, ensuring that people feel comfortable with IoTs impact on their privacy becomes increasingly important. To date the understanding of users' perception regarding privacy risks in the connected object space is limited. In this paper we aim to shed lights on this issue through a study with 16 people using a technology probe, and two popular connected objects. Our technology probe, Privacy Meter, is a situated display artefact that shows privacy notification messages about collected data and changes that may affect users' privacy. Our results show that users are primarily concerned with the ``Data Ownership" i.e., who owns the data. Our findings suggest the need for an intuitive tool that can minimise the cognitive distance between users' mental model and the smart functionalities offered by connected objects.
