Controlling Data Streams of IoT Devices in Smart Homes from a User Perspective

Increasingly, humans are surrounded by intelligent devices, such as smart devices, in the Internet of Things (IoT) context. These smart devices are used in various environments, such as smart environments as well as homes. On the one hand, these devices allow users to carry out daily routines comfortably at home. On the other hand, these devices simultaneously collect a vast amount of data types to execute the functionalities of these devices. Especially in home environments, the control of these data is essential as these devices are installed in private environments and spaces like homes. Also, sensitive and personal data are collected, processed and shared, especially in these private environments. Laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) require more transparency and user-centric data controls. Furthermore, several recent research projects, such as the Security Assistance Manager (SAM) from Fraunhofer Institute, are planning to develop standards for data privacy, -security and -control for smart home devices. This work aims to present user-centric data stream controls for smart home devices to provide users with more transparency and control of data streams, including collected, processed and shared data types in this context. Furthermore, we also present a proposal for providers and users of smart home devices, which allows them to focus on addressing the GDPR requirements and increasing user acceptance of those devices. We conducted two user-centric experiments to derive the user-centric data stream controls, called User-Centric-Control-Points (UCCPs), and their setting options to achieve this goal. The results of the questionnaire-based user-centric experiments allowed us to derive six UCCPs for smart home devices. Subsequently, we further analyzed six existing smart home devices and to what extent the derived UCCPs are supplied by those devices. Based on this analysis, we derived a proposal called quality check for providers and users of smart home devices. This proposal enables providers to evaluate and classify their devices regarding the provision of the derived UCCPs to increase user acceptance and implement the required GDPR requirements. Moreover, our quality check solution allows users to view and set supplied UCCPs during purchase and setup. Additionally, our solution allows users to gain more transparency on which data types are collected, processed, and shared for which smart home device functionalities. Our proposal in this work can also be deployed in environments other than smart homes.