  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: http://safehome.technology/demo.
