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Security and Privacy Perspectives of People Living in Shared Home Environments

Nandita Pattnaik, Shujun Li, Jason R. C. Nurse

TL;DR

This study targets security and privacy concerns of people living in non-family shared homes, a context understudied in prior work. It employs a mixed-methods design, combining an online survey (n≈149 valid) and qualitative analysis of Reddit posts (n≈46 relevant) to examine S&P awareness, behaviours, and concerns. A key contribution is the identification of four contextual user roles (ExternalPrimary, InternalPrimary, ActiveSecondary, PassiveSecondary) and a tailored threat actor model emphasizing insider and beyond-home threats, with landlords as a central external primary actor. The findings reveal widespread perceptions of lower security in shared homes, complex device ownership across multiple primary users, and notable cyber-physical/privacy risks, highlighting the need for fuller threat modelling and landlord-tenant considerations in secure, privacy-preserving shared living designs.

Abstract

Security and privacy 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 content analysis of sampled online posts on Reddit. It 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. Our study revealed new user types and 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. 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 threat 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.

Security and Privacy Perspectives of People Living in Shared Home Environments

TL;DR

This study targets security and privacy concerns of people living in non-family shared homes, a context understudied in prior work. It employs a mixed-methods design, combining an online survey (n≈149 valid) and qualitative analysis of Reddit posts (n≈46 relevant) to examine S&P awareness, behaviours, and concerns. A key contribution is the identification of four contextual user roles (ExternalPrimary, InternalPrimary, ActiveSecondary, PassiveSecondary) and a tailored threat actor model emphasizing insider and beyond-home threats, with landlords as a central external primary actor. The findings reveal widespread perceptions of lower security in shared homes, complex device ownership across multiple primary users, and notable cyber-physical/privacy risks, highlighting the need for fuller threat modelling and landlord-tenant considerations in secure, privacy-preserving shared living designs.

Abstract

Security and privacy 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 content analysis of sampled online posts on Reddit. It 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. Our study revealed new user types and 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. 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 threat 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.
Paper Structure (33 sections, 4 figures, 4 tables)

This paper contains 33 sections, 4 figures, 4 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Awareness & Behaviours of Users
  4. Focus on Different Types of Users:
  5. Power Dynamics between Different Types of Users:
  6. Shared Devices & Consequential Actions:
  7. Contextual Behaviours:
  8. Multi-user Home: Issues & Concerns
  9. Insider Threats and Adversarial Settings:
  10. Multi-user Home: Coping Strategies
  11. Research Gaps Identified
  12. Methodology
  13. Collecting Online Data
  14. The Online Survey
  15. Analysis of data
  16. ...and 18 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: The distribution of the number of inhabitants per household
  • Figure 2: A visual illustration of user roles within a shared home in terms of owning, managing, and using computing devices -- Primary users
  • Figure 3: A visual illustration of user roles within a shared home in terms of managing and using computing devices -- Secondary users.
  • Figure 4: Different threat actors in a shared home setting