"Create an environment that protects women, rather than selling anxiety!": Participatory Threat Modeling with Chinese Young Women Living Alone

TL;DR

This study addresses privacy, security, and safety risks faced by Chinese young women living alone amid pervasive smart-home and digital-platform ecosystems. It employs six participatory threat modeling workshops with 33 participants to produce a human-centered threat model and an open-access PSS guidebook tailored to Chinese YWLA. The findings identify three interlinked threat surfaces—digitally facilitated physical violence, platform-mediated harassment and scams, and multi-scalar surveillance—with four corresponding mitigation strategies that often shift risk rather than eliminate it. By integrating CPM with PTM and translating insights into concrete design and policy recommendations, the work offers actionable guidance for smart-home vendors, social platforms, policymakers, and educators. The study advances feminist HCI and usable security by centering non-Western lived experiences and delivering practical tools for risk assessment and mitigation.

Abstract

As more young women in China live alone, they navigate entangled privacy, security, and safety (PSS) risks across smart homes, online platforms, and public infrastructures. Drawing on six participatory threat modeling (PTM) workshops (n = 33), we present a human-centered threat model that illustrates how digitally facilitated physical violence, digital harassment and scams, and pervasive surveillance by individuals, companies, and the state are interconnected and mutually reinforcing. We also document four mitigation strategies employed by participants: smart home device configurations, boundary management, sociocultural practices, and social media tactics--each of which can introduce new vulnerabilities and emotional burdens. Based on these insights, we developed a digital PSS guidebook for young women living alone (YWLA) in China. We further propose actionable design implications for smart home devices and social media platforms, along with policy and legal recommendations and directions for educational interventions.