A Tagging Solution to Discover IoT Devices in Apartments

Abstract: The number of IoT devices in smart homes is increasing. This broad adoption facilitates users' lives, but it also brings problems. One such issue is that some IoT devices may invade users' privacy. Some reasons for this invasion can stem from obscure data collection practices or hidden devices. Specific IoT devices can exist out of sight and still collect user data to send to third parties via the Internet. Owners can easily forget the location or even the existence of these devices, especially if the owner is a landlord who manages several properties. The landlord-owner scenario creates multi-user problems as designers build machines for single users. We developed tags that use wireless protocols, buzzers, and LED lighting to lead users to solve the issue of device discovery in shared spaces and accommodate multi-user scenarios. They are attached to IoT devices inside a unit during their installation to be later discovered by a tenant. These tags have similar functionalities as the popular Tile models or Airtag, but our tags have different features based on our privacy use case. Our tags do not require pairing; multiple users can interact with them through our Android application. Although researchers developed several other tools, such as thermal cameras or virtual reality (VR), for discovering devices in environments, they have not used wireless protocols as a solution. We measured specific performance metrics of our tags to analyze their feasibility for this problem. We also conducted a user study to measure the participants' comfort levels while finding objects with our tags attached. Our results indicate that wireless tags can be viable for device tracking in residential properties.