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Security and privacy perspectives of people living in shared home environments

Pattnaik, Nandita, Li, Shujun, Nurse, Jason R. C. (2024) Security and privacy perspectives of people living in shared home environments. In: CSCW'24: Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. 8. (In press) (doi:10.1145/3686907) (Access to this publication is currently restricted. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:106798)

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Abstract

Security and privacy (S&P) perspectives of people in a multi-user home are a growing area of research, with many researchers reflecting on the complicated power imbalance and challenging access control issues of the devices involved. However, these studies primarily focused on the multi-user scenarios in traditional family home settings, leaving other types of multi-user home environments, such as homes shared by co-habitants without a familial relationship, under-studied. This paper closes this research gap via quantitative and qualitative analysis of results from an online survey and qualitative content analysis of sampled online posts on Reddit. The study explores the complex roles of shared home users, which depend on various factors unique to the shared home environment, e.g., who owns what home devices, how home devices are used by multiple users, and more complicated relationships between the landlord and people in the shared home and among co-habitants. Half (50.7%) of our survey participants thought that devices in a shared home are less secure than in a traditional family home. This perception was found statistically significantly associated with factors such as the fear of devices being tampered with in their absence and (lack of) trust in other co-habitants and their visitors. We observed cyber-physical threats being a prominent topic discussed in Reddit posts. Our study revealed new user types and user relationships in a multi-user environment such as 'ExternalPrimary-InternalPrimary' while analysing the landlord and shared home resident relationship with regard to shared home device use. Based on the results of the online survey and the Reddit data, we propose a threat actor model for shared home environments, which has a focus on possible malicious behaviours of current and past co-habitants of a shared home, as a special type of 'insider threats' in a home environment. We also recommend further research to understand the complex roles co-habitants can play in navigating and adapting to a shared home environment's security and privacy landscape.

Item Type: Conference or workshop item (Paper)
DOI/Identification number: 10.1145/3686907
Uncontrolled keywords: security; privacy; shared home; threat modelling; multi-user home; qualitative analysis; statistical analysis
Subjects: Q Science
Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science)
Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science) > QA 75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science) > QA 76 Software, computer programming, > QA76.9.H85 Human computer interaction
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Computing
Depositing User: Nandita Pattnaik
Date Deposited: 06 Aug 2024 14:01 UTC
Last Modified: 07 Sep 2024 13:57 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/106798 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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