Consumer Attitudes Towards Privacy and Security in Home Assistants

Home assistants such as Amazon's Echo and Google's Home have become a common household item. In this paper we investigate if and what consumers have reported online (in the form of reviews) related to privacy and security after purchasing or using these devices. We use natural language processing to first identify privacy and security related reviews, and then to investigate the topics consumers discuss within the reviews. We were interested in understanding consumers' major concerns. Issues and/or concerns related to security and privacy have have been reported within reviews; however, these topics only account for 2% of the total reviews given for these devices. Three major concerns were highlighted in our findings: data collection and scope, "creepy" device behavior, and violations of personal privacy thresholds.