This study is now closed. Thanks all those who participated and gave us valuable responses. All email IDs selected in the drawing will be notified shortly (24-48 hours).
Hello Everyone
I’m a student at the University of Michigan. I’m conducting some research into the Vera ecosystem and have created a survey for users. Every participant who enters his/her email id towards the end of the survey will be entered into a drawing to win a $10 Amazon gift card (There are a total of 5 gift cards available; each randomly selected email ID gets one gift card). If you decide to enter your email address, we assure you that this information will not be shared with anyone and is used only for the purpose of contacting you if your email ID is selected in the drawing.
Please note that every survey response will be reviewed manually and then entered into the drawing.
The survey takes approximately 5 minutes.
[ul][li]How many deviced are connected with your Vera hub(s)? [/li]
[li]How many apps have you installed on your Vera controller(s)? [/li]
[li]Select all the security or safety critical devices connected to your Vera controller(s)?[/li]
[li]Have you experienced any security-related incidents due to incorrect or buggy Vera apps? For example, suppose you have a doorlock and it was accidently unlocked at night because of a Vera app or rules that you added.
Imagine you have several programs installed in your home automation system for home security, convenience, utility and energy efficiency. Sometimes, these programs might take actions without asking you first. We have categorized these actions and listed representative examples. Your feelings towards those unexpected actions could range from indifference (you don’t care) to being very upset. We ask that you assign a rating (1 - indifferent, 5 - very upset) to each category of such actions by a program: [/li]
[li]Do you have any security and/or privacy related concerns with respect to programs that run in a home automation system? [/li]
[li]Do you live with children (younger than 13 years old)? [/li]
[li]How many people (including yourself) currently live in your house? [/li]
[li]How many years of professional programming experience do you have? [/li]
[li]If you want to enter a drawing of a $10 Amazon gift card, please leave your email here.[/li][/ul]
Do you own a Vera controller? - No
[ul][li]Imagine you have several programs installed in your home automation system for home security, convenience, utility and energy efficiency. Sometimes, these programs might take actions without asking you first. We have categorized these actions and listed representative examples. Your feelings towards those unexpected actions could range from indifference (you don’t care) to being very upset. We ask that you assign a rating (1 - indifferent, 5 - very upset) to each category of such actions by a program: [/li]
[li]Do you have any security and/or privacy related concerns with respect to programs that run in a home automation system? [/li]
[li]Do you live with children (younger than 13 years old)? [/li]
[li]How many people (including yourself) currently live in your house? [/li]
[li]How many years of professional programming experience do you have? [/li]
[li]If you want to enter a drawing of a $10 Amazon gift card, please leave your email here.[/li][/ul]
Participation is voluntary – no one is forcing you to take the survey. And I’ve already told you my name and affiliation. Feel free to look it up. In fact, you can look up and contact the email on my webpage and I will respond stating that I posted this survey. I’d appreciate it if you would refrain from posting false accusations about my intentions of the research. If you don’t want to participate, that’s well and good but do not spread false information.
[quote=“DeltaNu1142, post:6, topic:188764”]Welcome to the forum.[/quote]Nice.
@earlenceferns - Your very first post on this board is spam! Don’t cop an attitude when people distrust you.
When you come on the forum and post number one is spamming your survey that suspiciously collects emails address, you’re not going to get a warm welcome. You can say you are a student at UM but that means diddly. I can say that I am a Nigerian prince.
Perhaps you would have had a better reception if you had initially disclosed more about who you were, what the purpose of the survey was, how and where the data would be used and then solicited participants. I say perhaps because when the primary purpose of your first ever post is to solicit participants, you’re spamming.
I agree that I should have posted more information about the survey but that doesn’t mean you can start placing false accusations. The reason I did not post too much detail in the starting post is because I do not want to bias the responses. And nothing personal is collected until the end of the survey where we ask for an email.
I have provided enough information for independent verification of my identity. You all are educated people and surely know how to go look up someone’s webpage if you do not want to take my affiliation on face value.
If you distrust a post, then asking for clarifications is probably the more educated way rather than posting useless comments like “he is a hacker”, or “not even worth $1000” that end up being detrimental to my research by steering away potential participants. I even abstained from replying to your initial post because I thought it was useful that you posted a quick summary-like thing about the survey.
However, everyone else jumping on the bandwagon is not appropriate. I’ve already stated the purpose of the email address. In fact, you are free to not post your email address if you just want to help and not enter the drawing. I think that is abundantly clear.
The purpose of the survey is quite explanatory and if you took the time to look it thru, the email is solicited at the endafter you’ve seen what is in the survey (you can terminate the survey at any point too). I think I am more than honest in my intentions and in my technique.
So what if my first post is about gaining participants. This is a “general” question and answer forum. Atleast I am honest rather than making a smalltalk post which is useless and a waste of time to everyone. Need I remind you that the post was approved by a moderator. If the moderator thought it was spam, he/she would have told me so and I would have made appropriate changes.
First of all, my background is IT security so I get very suspicious about someone who’se first post claims a certain affiliation yet the survey page does not reflect that affiliation, yet some wierdly named domain. I know better than to click on such a link as it’s very easy to be directed to a page that has a nice payload of malware or even ransomware. Had the link been one that mashed with your claimed affiliation and on that page there was more info confirming you are who you claim you are. As well as detailed specifications of what the collected data will be used for. Complete with privacy information. Then the link to the actual survey had been on there it would have been a lot less suspicious and would have looked a lot more legit. Your post being what it was, I had, and still have, no intention of clicking that link. And still, not even for the possibility of a $1000 drawing as there are no assurances that drawing will actually take place. So let that be detrimental to what you call your ‘research’. You come in here and apparently see us as nothing more than a nice fat collection of data you want to mine for your purpose. Dangling a possible $10 Amazon gift card as the carrot. One could go as far as to consider that behavior to be disrespectful.
Unfortunately your post is very much in the same vain used by those who try to lure unsuspecting victims to a page so they can infect them or scam them. Again, you wonder why those of us with experience get suspicious. Does ‘please fill in this quick survey and you will get a free cruise to the Bahamas’ sound familiar? It does to me and what it is intended for is to have unsuspecting victims answer some seemingly innocent questions that will provide enough info to assist in eg identity fraud or a nice profile that can be sold to 3rd parties. That’s the benign version. The not so benign version is a payload of cryptware than will encrypt one’s computer and demand a ransom. Again, I have seen no assurances in your posts this will not happen with your survey.
So now you are upset and lash out. Do you even have a Vera HA controller or are you considering buying one? As that is what these boards are for, support for those of us that have a Vera HA controller or are considering purchasing one. They are not for someone trying to hawk some kind of survey without any prior contribution. Which falls under the general definition of SPAM.
These boards are not that actively moderated, that is why the CAPTCHA’s. It is not to say they are not moderated at all as the responses to your thread have proven.
For the record, I have not only Vera but several other controllers from many different vendors. And we have extensive experience testing and breaking these devices. Furthermore, we are actively engaged in making home automation for the general user population safer (such as yourself). So I view the members of this community as a valuable source of real world information. Again, you presume to understand that I am upset. I am merely conveying my position in unequivocal terms.
There might be no immediate contribution to this forum, but there is certainly help for the home automation community at large. Just because I have no prior “contribution” (whatever that means) in this forum, does it mean I have no right to query users on their extensive experience with Vera?
If you had explained your concerns in this manner, I would have readily corrected my post.
I have gotten some useful responses to my survey – thanks to all the members who decided to help further our research and help design better home automation systems. The link will be up over the weekend, for those who want to participate. If anyone wants access to the results, our final output will be in the form of a scientific paper that is freely available upon publication (just send me an email asking for the copy. Alternatively, when it is published, I will post a link here). Of course, no personal information ever appears in publications like these.
This study is now closed. Thanks all those who participated and gave us valuable responses. All email IDs selected in the drawing will be notified shortly (24-48 hours).