Associating the Impact of Smart Home Technologies on Privacy

Abstract

Smart home is the term commonly used to define a residence that uses a home controller to integrate the residence's various home automation systems. It is promising economical, social, environmental and other benefits such as enhanced scalability, computing elasticity, and cost efficiency. However, every generation of technology opens the door to new possibilities but also opens the door to new vulnerabilities, thus, Smart home with the benefits of cloud-based, hosted software platforms also comes with the responsibility to data privacy. The natural characteristic of smart environment is the prevalence of devices, sensors, readers, and applications which have the potential to collect a multiplicity of data types of individuals as they move through such environments. The possibilities to automatically identify objects may lead to an automatic identification of persons that are related to these objects. Failure to adequately address this problem can result in considerable damage to company’s reputation and finances, as well as negative effects for data subjects. This paper tries to associate the impact of the use of smart home technologies on privacy. The study explores the state-of-the-art on the way towards the smart home, the application fields that have already proved their potential for realizing the vision and promises related to the new technology, the growing market and challenges that have to be addressed. The success and sustainability of smart home will depend on how privacy and other rights of individuals can be protected and how individuals can come to trust the intelligent world that surrounds them. This study addresses these issues by analyzing scenarios for smart home applications that have been developed over the last few years. It elaborates the assumptions that promoters make about the likely use of the technology and possibly unwanted side effects. It concludes with a number of threats for personal privacy that become evident. The paper also reviews current legal legislations in data privacy and concludes by introducing some of the ongoing research efforts that address smart home privacy issues.