Housemates, family, and smart speakers

Your home is full of people and devices that were never vetted by your employer. That's normal, and you don't need to turn your house into an office. You do need to keep work information out of their reach.

People in your household

Confidentiality obligations don't pause because you're at home. Family members and housemates should not be able to read work documents, overhear sensitive calls, or use your logged-in work session. In practice this means locking your screen when you walk away, angling your monitor away from shared spaces where you can, and taking genuinely sensitive calls in a room with the door closed. If you handle personal data about clients, patients, or colleagues, treat "my partner glanced at my screen" as the data protection issue it would be if a stranger did it in a cafe.

Smart speakers and sensitive calls

Smart speakers and voice assistants listen for their wake word, which means their microphones are always on. Recordings can be triggered accidentally, and in some services they may be stored or reviewed. For most routine work this is a manageable background risk, but for genuinely sensitive discussions, a client's personal data, disciplinary matters, financial results, commercially confidential plans, it is sensible to mute the speaker's microphone, move to another room, or unplug the device for the duration of the call. The same thinking applies to video doorbells and baby monitors with microphones near your workspace.

Visitors and guests

When friends or tradespeople are in your home, apply the same clear-desk thinking you would in an office. Don't leave printed work papers on the kitchen table, and don't leave an unlocked laptop showing a confidential document while you make coffee.

None of this is about distrusting the people you live with. It is about making sure that if something does go wrong, it is never because work information was simply left lying around.