Smart home devices raise privacy concerns among not only primary users but also bystanders like domestic workers. We conducted 25 qualitative interviews with nannies and 16 with parents who employed nannies, in the U.S., to explore and compare their views on and privacy threat models for smart home devices. We found device-specific purposes of use inspired different perspectives among nanny participants. Most were comfortable with employers’ smart speakers and smart TVs, whose purpose had nothing to do with them. However, with indoor smart cameras, nanny participants were often not just bystanders but targets of monitoring; in such situations, they had a wider range of attitudes. In contrast, parent participants tended to have more similar views across devices. We found notable disconnects regarding disclosure, where nanny participants often hesitated to ask about cameras, but parent participants assumed nannies just didn’t care. We recommend prioritizing interventions supporting disclosure, discussion, and sharing control.

Smart home devices, such as security cameras and voice assistants, have seen widespread adoption due to the utility and convenience they offer to users. The deployment of these devices in homes, however, raises privacy concerns for bystanders—people who may not necessarily have a say in the deployment and configuration of these devices, and yet are exposed to or affected by their data collection. Examples of bystanders include guests, short-term tenants, and domestic workers. Prior work has studied the privacy concerns of different bystander groups and proposed design solutions for addressing these concerns. In this article, we present a systematic review of previous studies, describing how smart home bystanders are defined and classified, and illuminating the range of concerns and solutions proposed in the existing academic literature. We also discuss limitations in prior work, barriers to the uptake of research-based solutions by industry, and identify avenues for future research.