Anticipating Smart Home Security and Privacy Threats with Survivors of Intimate Partner Abuse

This paper presents a design-led qualitative study investigating the (mis)use of digital technologies as tools for stalking, threats, and harassment within the context of intimate partner abuse (IPA). Results from interviews and domestic abuse forum data are reported on and set the foundation for a series of codesign workshops. The workshops invite participants to creatively anticipate smart home attack vectors, based on their lived experiences of IPA. Three workshops with seven IPA survivors and eleven professional support workers are detailed in this paper. Findings are organised into three phases through which survivors' privacy and security needs can be understood: 1) initial purchasing and configuring of smart home devices; 2) daily usage and; 3) (re-)securing devices after abuse has been identified. The speculative attack-vectors and design ideas generated by participants expose, for the first time, survivors' understanding of smart home security and privacy, as well as their needs, concerns, and requirements.