Context Aware Family Dynamics based Internet of Things Access Control Towards Better Child Safety

Today, children are increasingly connected to the Internet and consume content and services through various means. It has been a challenge for less tech-savvy parents to protect children from harmful content and services. Internet of Things (IoT) has made the situation much worse as IoT devices allow children to connect to the Internet in novel ways (e.g., connected refrigerators, TVs, and so on). In this paper, we propose mySafeHome, an approach which utilises family dynamics to provide a more natural, and intuitive access control mechanism to protect children from harmful content and services in the context of IoT. In mySafeHome, access control dynamically adapts based on the physical distance between family members. For example, a particular type of content can only be consumed, through TV, by children if the parents are in the same room (or hearing distance). mySafeHome allows parents to assess a given content by themselves. Our approach also aims to create granular levels of access control (e.g., block / limit certain content, features, services, on certain devices when the parents are not in the vicinity). We developed a prototype using OpenHAB and several smart home devices to demonstrate the proposed approach. We believe that our approach also facilitates the creation of better relationships between family members. A demo can be viewed here:https://youtu.be/ODZ7vXoRlNA.