“You Shouldn't Need to Share Your Data”: Perceived Privacy Risks and Mitigation Strategies Among Privacy-Conscious Smart Home Power Users

Fueled by internet-of-things technologies and spanning a wide range of sensors, speakers, and cameras, smart homes promise to make our lives easier and automate routine tasks. From smart speakers to security cameras, these devices answer our questions, monitor our home environment, and conserve energy. They also collect significant data, ranging from on/off commands to audio and video data, and they do this in some of our most private spaces. In this paper, we explore the privacy risks associated with smart home technology by focusing on privacy-conscious smart home power users—those who spend significant time and money to research, install, and integrate devices throughout their homes and engage in advanced device and network management strategies to mitigate their privacy concerns. Drawing on data from 10 focus groups with 32 privacy-conscious power users, we identify the key privacy risks they perceive from this technology, as well as how they mitigate those risks through increasingly complex strategies. Our findings reveal that navigating the technical landscape that makes up the smart home environment—including what data is collected, what options are available for managing or restricting data flows, and who has access to data collected by smart devices—is complex and often confusing, even for people who spend significant time researching devices and integration options. We use these findings to argue for further development of tools that are transparent, easy to use, and aligned with the privacy needs of a diverse userbase.