Does My Smart Device Provider Care About My Privacy? Investigating Trust Factors and User Attitudes in IoT Systems

With the wide spread of IoT devices, smart systems gain more and more control over personal data and daily lives of their users. This control, however, can easily be misused, either by system providers themselves acting in bad faith, or by external attackers. Implementing proper measures towards security and privacy protection of smart systems, therefore, becomes of critical importance. In this paper we present a study to investigate beliefs among end users, whether the smart system providers are both capable and motivated to implement such measures. For this purpose, we conduct an online survey of 98 participants from the UK, which we analyse using quantitative and qualitative methods. Our results show that users’ trust in proper security and privacy protection in smart systems is influenced by a multitude of factors such as information about concrete technologies and privacy policies of the systems, but also information about the company such as its reputation or geographical location. We conclude that transparency by companies, regarding both the technologies behind the concrete system and the general practices of the company itself, is a crucial factor in ensuring end user confidence.