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Are smart home devices abandoning IPV victims?

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posted on 2023-08-05, 13:13 authored by Ahmed Alshehri, Malek Ben Salem, Lei Ding

Smart home devices have brought us many benefits such as advanced security, convenience, and entertainment. However, these devices also have made unintended consequences like giving ultimate power for devices' owners over their intimate partners in the same household which might lead to tech-facilitated domestic abuse (tech-abuse) as recent research has shown. In this paper, we systematize findings on tech-abuse in smart homes. We show that domestic abuse and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in smart homes is more effective and less risky for abusers. Victims find it more harmful and more challenging to protect themselves from. We articulate a comprehensive analysis of all the phases of abuse in smart homes and categorize risks and needs in each phase by designing a unified analytical framework. Technical analysis of current smart home technologies is conducted to shed light upon their limitations. We also summarize recent recommendations to combat tech-abuse in smart homes and focus on their potentials and shortcomings. Unsurprisingly, we find that many recommendations conflict with each other due to a lack of understanding of phases of abuse in smart homes. Desirable properties to design abuse-resistant smart home devices are proposed for all the phases of abuse. The research community benefits from our analysis and recommendations to move forward with a focus on filling the blind spots of existing smart home devices' safety measures and building appropriate safety measures that consider tech-abuse threats in smart homes.

History

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

Notes

Proceedings - 2020 IEEE 19th International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications, TrustCom 2020, Pages 1368 - 1375, December 2020, Article number 934303219th, IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications, TrustCom 2020, Guangzhou, 29 December 2020 - 1 January 2021, 167070.

Handle

http://hdl.handle.net/1961/auislandora:95284

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