I recently looked up a specialized medical network. For weeks following the search, I was bombarded with ads for the network and other related services: the Internet clearly thought I was on the market for a new doctor. The funny thing is that I was looking this up for someone else and all this information, […]

It has been understood for decades that it’s practically impossible to secure your computer (or computer-based device such as a voting machine) from attackers who have physical access. The basic principle is that someone with physical access doesn’t have to log in using the password, they can just unscrew your hard drive (or SSD, or […]

By Orestis Papakyriakopoulos, Ashley Gorham, Eli Lucherini, Mihir Kshirsagar, and Arvind Narayanan. Facebook’s latest move to obstruct academic research about its platform by disabling NYU’s Ad Observatory is deeply troubling. While Facebook claims to offer researchers access to its FORT Researcher Platform as an alternative, that is an illusory offer as we have recently learned […]

By Eli Lucherini, Matthew Sun, Amy Winecoff, and Arvind Narayanan. For those interested in the impact of recommender systems on society, we are happy to share several new pieces: a software tool for studying this interface via simulation the accompanying paper a short piece on methodological concerns in simulation research a talk offering a critical […]