Smartphones are essential to the most important and intimate parts of people’s lives, connecting Australians to banking, health, government services as well as each other. Sharing smartphones is also a normal part of relationships and 70% of people allow their intimate partner to access their phone. However, little is known about how couples actually share their phones, or what that means for privacy, cybersecurity and technology-facilitated abuse.

Through a national online survey and in-depth interviews, this groundbreaking research reveals how real-world sharing habits challenge the assumptions built into most cybersecurity advice and smartphone design. The status quo focuses on large outside threats while failing to account for more mundane relational risks when people share access to their phone.

The project investigates the relational aspects of smartphone use and their implications to improve best practice for informed consent with smartphone sharing and reform cybersecurity models. The researchers make a suite of recommends including:

• Designers expand smartphone cybersecurity options

• Policy makers integrate intimate threats into cybersecurity models

• Governments should promote informed consent for smartphone sharing