Experts say domestic abusers increasingly use connected home devices like smart locks, security cameras, and lighting to scare or spy on victims
SAN FRANCISCO — The people who called into the help hotlines and domestic violence shelters said they felt as if they were going crazy. Tweets: @madelineashby , @sladner , @aallan , @tamsenparker , @josephfcox , @kimcrayton1 , @tom_peters , @thaiphi_le , @nytimesbusiness , @hrwiltse , and @hshaban Tweets: Madeline Ashby / @madelineashby : Oh hey, I wrote a short story about this: http://slate.com/... The theme of the issue was “Home,” so I said “I want to write a story about how abusers use smart home technology and call it Domestic Violence.” And here we are. http://twitter.com/... Sam Ladner / @sladner : This is now documented by researchers as a clear pattern. Tech is not neutral, and technologists must acknowledge that http://dl.acm.org/... http://twitter.com/... Alasdair Allan / @aallan : A lot of the smart connected devices in our homes are designed by single people, living alone. Poorly designed for homes with spouses, or children, most #iot devices don't have a multi-user model. Let alone ways to cope with issues around domestic abuse. http://www.nytimes.com/... Tamsen Parker / @tamsenparker : My naive muffin of a husband thought it was “cool” that he could tell where in the house I was because of our smart thermostats. I told him it was creepy AF because of stuff like this. http://twitter.com/... Joseph Cox / @josephfcox : Harassment, monitoring, revenge and control. Domestic abuse victims and workers report the rising abuse of smart items in the home http://www.nytimes.com/... http://twitter.com/... Kim Crayton / @kimcrayton1 : “Abusers — using apps on their smartphones, which are connected to the internet-enabled devices” Another unintended consequences of technology. We've taught consumers that what we create is “perfect”. This blind faith is harmful. #causeascene http://www.nytimes.com/... Tom Peters / @tom_peters : Dear God, will it never end? In a word, no. We're at the beginning of the beginning. “Thermostats, Locks and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse via @NYTimes” http://www.nytimes.com/... Thai Phi Le / @thaiphi_le : “Abusive relationships are about power and control, and he uses technology.” Lawyers also need to make sure to include smart home tech in restraining orders. http://twitter.com/... @nytimesbusiness : “When we see new technology come out, people often think, ‘Wow, my life is going to be a lot safer,’” said the chief executive of the National Domestic Violence Hotline. But “we often see the opposite with survivors of domestic violence.” http://www.nytimes.com/... Heather Wiltse / @hrwiltse : Another case showing why it is so important to consider also unintended uses of technologies and their multiple stabilities, especially when they mediate real actions. Thermostats, Locks and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse via @NYTimes http://www.nytimes.com/... Hamza Shaban / @hshaban : A disturbing story about power, gender, product design and unintended consequences: Smart home devices are enabling a new pattern of domestic abuse where abusers use locks, thermostats, lights & cameras to harass, monitor & control women https://www.nytimes.com/... by @NellieBowles
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2018 report was the moment smart home abuse entered mainstream coverage: hotline callers described locks, cameras, and lighting being remotely controlled by abusers, leaving victims unsure whether their homes were watching them. It sits at the start of an arc the corpus keeps extending — from connected thermostats to trackers and shared accounts.
Later coverage shows the pattern hardening into a category: experts later detailed how Apple AirTags can track a partner despite built-in protections, advocates pushed for legislation making it easy to leave family phone plans, and by 2026 the Financial Times framed the whole phenomenon as tech-assisted abuse — remote manipulation as a standing feature of intimate-partner violence.
First-order effects
- Domestic violence hotlines and shelters, including the National Domestic Violence Hotline cited in the coverage, now need staff who can diagnose smart locks, cameras, and lighting as abuse vectors, not just physical-safety risks.
- Victims face a new evidentiary problem: the abuse runs through accounts and devices they may not own or know how to audit, so 'going crazy' becomes the presenting symptom before anyone names the technology.
Second-order effects
- Device makers are pushed toward account-transfer and reset controls as safety features, a pressure that recurs in the corpus when AirTag protections prove insufficient for non-iOS victims and when shared phone plans become stalking infrastructure.
- Advocacy shifts from shelter services to product and policy demands — the same experts calling out smart homes later target carrier account structures, widening the definition of what counts as domestic-abuse tooling.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, consumer IoT design gets judged by its worst-case use inside relationships, making abuse-resistance — ownership clarity, transferability, tamper alerts — a baseline requirement rather than an afterthought.
- Regulation follows the corpus trajectory from naming the problem to mandating exits: first shared accounts, then trackers, suggesting future rules will treat intimate-partner misuse as a design defect manufacturers must anticipate.
The trend: Consumer connected-home products are being redefined by how abusers weaponize them, pushing anti-stalking and account-control features from optional safeguards toward expected design and regulatory baselines.