Location, Location, Security? Exploring Location-Based Smart Device Security Concerns and Mitigations within Low-Rent Homes

The increasing adoption of smart devices in the home introduce new security implications for tenants, with previous research showing the significance of where the devices are placed. This paper examines the relationship between device location and security: we ask how users’ security concerns shape where they place their smart devices and how they attempt to mitigate their concerns. The research focuses on an underrepresented group, those people living in social (low-rent) housing, motivated by the growing interest of housing providers to install smart devices within tenants’ homes. Using speculative design as a probe followed by interviews with eleven tenants, we find that security concerns are centred around ‘intimate places’, ‘social responsibility’ and ‘surveillance’ with users combining social practices and technical security features to mitigate these. Our research contributes new ethical implications for deploying and designing smart home devices addressed to social housing providers and smart device designers.