Privacy Leakage in Smart Homes and Its Mitigation: IFTTT as a Case Study

The combination of smart home platforms and automation apps introduce many conveniences to smart home users. However, this also brings the potential of privacy leakage. If a smart home platform is permitted to collect all the events of a user day and night, then the platform will learn the behavior...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Rixin Xu, Qiang Zeng, Liehuang Zhu, Haotian Chi, Xiaojiang Du, Mohsen Guizani
Format:	Article
Language:	English
Published:	IEEE 2019-01-01
Series:	IEEE Access
Subjects:	IFTTT privacy leakage smart home SmartThings
Online Access:	https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8704324/

id	doaj-3dddb55b2d3d4f4ba09345db2d7d9945
record_format	Article
spelling	doaj-3dddb55b2d3d4f4ba09345db2d7d99452021-03-29T22:57:54ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362019-01-017634576347110.1109/ACCESS.2019.29112028704324Privacy Leakage in Smart Homes and Its Mitigation: IFTTT as a Case StudyRixin Xu0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6521-5534Qiang Zeng1Liehuang Zhu2https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3277-3887Haotian Chi3Xiaojiang Du4Mohsen Guizani5School of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, ChinaComputer Science and Engineering Department, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USASchool of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, ChinaDepartment of Computer and Information Sciences, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USADepartment of Computer and Information Sciences, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USADepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, Qatar University, Doha, QatarThe combination of smart home platforms and automation apps introduce many conveniences to smart home users. However, this also brings the potential of privacy leakage. If a smart home platform is permitted to collect all the events of a user day and night, then the platform will learn the behavior patterns of this user before long. In this paper, we investigate how IFTTT, one of the most popular smart home platforms, has the capability of monitoring the daily life of a user in a variety of ways that are hardly noticeable. Moreover, we propose multiple ideas for mitigating privacy leakages, which all together form a “Filter-and-Fuzz” (F&F) process: first, it filters out events unneeded by the IFTTT platform. Then, it fuzzifies the values and frequencies of the remaining events. We evaluate the F&F process and the results show that the proposed solution makes the IFTTT unable to recognize any of the user's behavior patterns.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8704324/IFTTTprivacy leakagesmart homeSmartThings
collection	DOAJ
language	English
format	Article
sources	DOAJ
author	Rixin Xu Qiang Zeng Liehuang Zhu Haotian Chi Xiaojiang Du Mohsen Guizani
spellingShingle	Rixin Xu Qiang Zeng Liehuang Zhu Haotian Chi Xiaojiang Du Mohsen Guizani Privacy Leakage in Smart Homes and Its Mitigation: IFTTT as a Case Study IEEE Access IFTTT privacy leakage smart home SmartThings
author_facet	Rixin Xu Qiang Zeng Liehuang Zhu Haotian Chi Xiaojiang Du Mohsen Guizani
author_sort	Rixin Xu
title	Privacy Leakage in Smart Homes and Its Mitigation: IFTTT as a Case Study
title_short	Privacy Leakage in Smart Homes and Its Mitigation: IFTTT as a Case Study
title_full	Privacy Leakage in Smart Homes and Its Mitigation: IFTTT as a Case Study
title_fullStr	Privacy Leakage in Smart Homes and Its Mitigation: IFTTT as a Case Study
title_full_unstemmed	Privacy Leakage in Smart Homes and Its Mitigation: IFTTT as a Case Study
title_sort	privacy leakage in smart homes and its mitigation: ifttt as a case study
publisher	IEEE
series	IEEE Access
issn	2169-3536
publishDate	2019-01-01
description	The combination of smart home platforms and automation apps introduce many conveniences to smart home users. However, this also brings the potential of privacy leakage. If a smart home platform is permitted to collect all the events of a user day and night, then the platform will learn the behavior patterns of this user before long. In this paper, we investigate how IFTTT, one of the most popular smart home platforms, has the capability of monitoring the daily life of a user in a variety of ways that are hardly noticeable. Moreover, we propose multiple ideas for mitigating privacy leakages, which all together form a “Filter-and-Fuzz” (F&F) process: first, it filters out events unneeded by the IFTTT platform. Then, it fuzzifies the values and frequencies of the remaining events. We evaluate the F&F process and the results show that the proposed solution makes the IFTTT unable to recognize any of the user's behavior patterns.
topic	IFTTT privacy leakage smart home SmartThings
url	https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8704324/
work_keys_str_mv	AT rixinxu privacyleakageinsmarthomesanditsmitigationiftttasacasestudy AT qiangzeng privacyleakageinsmarthomesanditsmitigationiftttasacasestudy AT liehuangzhu privacyleakageinsmarthomesanditsmitigationiftttasacasestudy AT haotianchi privacyleakageinsmarthomesanditsmitigationiftttasacasestudy AT xiaojiangdu privacyleakageinsmarthomesanditsmitigationiftttasacasestudy AT mohsenguizani privacyleakageinsmarthomesanditsmitigationiftttasacasestudy
_version_	1724190416688906240

Privacy Leakage in Smart Homes and Its Mitigation: IFTTT as a Case Study

Similar Items