Kayleigh Skye Gall
An Investigation into Technical Countermeasures Against Smart Home Technology-Facilitated Abuse
What is tech abuse?
Technology-facilitated abuse (tech abuse) is the misuse of internet connected devices to carry out acts of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence.
The concept of tech abuse is not a new one. Whereas in the past tech abuse has been confined to persistent phone calls or online slander on social media, advances in IoT technology and growth of use of smart home tech allow abusers to harass, control, and monitor their victims with ease.
Tech abuse facilitated with smart home devices can involve the use of a wide range of devices such as smart speakers, climate control systems, security cameras, and tablets. These devices can be used to facilitate different methods of abuse including harassment, gaslighting, stalking, and asserting omnipresence.
The majority of solutions covered in previous work are focused on what can be done after the abuse has taken place.
My project explored the possibility of introducing countermeasures into smart home devices to prevent their use to facilitate abusive acts and behaviours.
During my project I investigated previous reports of smart home devices being misused to facilitate abuse and designed countermeasures based on the specific ways that devices are exploited to facilitate harassment, gaslighting, stalking, and asserting omnipresence.
I integrated the individual countermeasures for preventing specific methods of abuse into a wider framework which makes use of usage logs, device state indicators, and machine learning.
I developed a prototype application in Android Studio which visualises the ideas put forward in the framework of countermeasures for a smart home system.
The prototype features a usage log to tackle gaslighting and a simulation of the user experience of a system which utilises machine learning algorithms to identify patterns of abuse
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