participant ideas to help users build a more private smart home

[anakinsbrna]

I shared insights from a Privacy User Study in a discussion thread here

During the study, some participants suggested concrete solutions that Home Assistant could implement as a feature to support users in setting up and maintaining a more private smart home:

This included:

• initiating a regular review of the data being tracked by Home Assistant

• Telling users how private their smart home is and suggesting actions to improve, for example by

  • Visualizing how much the server is talking to the outside

  • watching all smart home networks - or overall networks within the home - and pointing out privacy and security vulnerabilities

  • Motivating people to take action to improve their privacy

• suggesting privacy-respecting devices with an “approved by” label

[anakinsbrna]

@idilb the last bullet point "suggesting privacy-respecting devices with an "approved by" label overlaps with insights from the Works with Home Assistant research :) maybe the Works With Home Assistant badge can help communicate privacy information

[idilb]

This actually came up during the interviews, where users suggested a special logo/asterisk/color coding in the badge to mean 'works locally with HA'. This is just my anecdotal memory, more conclusive results coming after the analysis!