Alan Mislove
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View article: On the Use of Proxies in Political Ad Targeting
On the Use of Proxies in Political Ad Targeting Open
Detailed targeting of advertisements has long been one of the core offerings of online platforms. Unfortunately, malicious advertisers have frequently abused such targeting features, with results that range from violating civil rights laws…
View article: Track You: A Deep Dive into Safety Alerts for Apple AirTags
Track You: A Deep Dive into Safety Alerts for Apple AirTags Open
Bluetooth-based item trackers have sparked apprehension over their potential misuse in harmful stalking and privacy violations. In response, manufacturers have implemented safety alerts to notify victims of extended tracking by unknown ite…
View article: Problematic Advertising and its Disparate Exposure on Facebook
Problematic Advertising and its Disparate Exposure on Facebook Open
Targeted advertising remains an important part of the free web browsing experience, where advertisers' targeting and personalization algorithms together find the most relevant audience for millions of ads every day. However, given the wide…
View article: Hammurabi
Hammurabi Open
This paper proposes using a logic programming language to disentangle X.509 certificate validation policy from mechanism. Expressing validation policies in a logic programming language provides multiple benefits. First, policy and mechanis…
View article: Selfish & opaque transaction ordering in the Bitcoin blockchain
Selfish & opaque transaction ordering in the Bitcoin blockchain Open
Most public blockchain protocols, including the popular Bitcoin and Ethereum\nblockchains, do not formally specify the order in which miners should select\ntransactions from the pool of pending (or uncommitted) transactions for\ninclusion …
View article: The ties that un-bind
The ties that un-bind Open
The couplings between IP addresses, names of content or services, and socket interfaces, are too tight. This impedes system manageability, growth, and overall provisioning. In turn, large-scale content providers are forced to use staggerin…
View article: Tweetin' in the Rain: Exploring Societal-Scale Effects of Weather on Mood
Tweetin' in the Rain: Exploring Societal-Scale Effects of Weather on Mood Open
There has been significant recent interest in using the aggregate sentiment from social media sites to understand and predict real-world phenomena. However, the data from social media sites also offers a unique and — so far — unexplored op…
View article: Understanding the Demographics of Twitter Users
Understanding the Demographics of Twitter Users Open
Every second, the thoughts and feelings of millions of people across the world are recorded in the form of 140-character tweets using Twitter. However, despite the enormous potential presented by this remarkable data source, we still do no…
View article: Ad Delivery Algorithms
Ad Delivery Algorithms Open
Political campaigns are increasingly turning to targeted advertising platforms to inform and mobilize potential voters. The appeal of these platforms stems from their promise to empower advertisers to select (or "target") users who see the…
View article: Algorithms that "Don't See Color": Comparing Biases in Lookalike and Special Ad Audiences
Algorithms that "Don't See Color": Comparing Biases in Lookalike and Special Ad Audiences Open
Researchers and journalists have repeatedly shown that algorithms commonly used in domains such as credit, employment, healthcare, or criminal justice can have discriminatory effects. Some organizations have tried to mitigate these effects…
View article: Ad Delivery Algorithms: The Hidden Arbiters of Political Messaging
Ad Delivery Algorithms: The Hidden Arbiters of Political Messaging Open
Political campaigns are increasingly turning to digital advertising to reach voters. These platforms empower advertisers to target messages to platform users with great precision, including through inferences about those users' political a…
View article: Discrimination through Optimization: How Facebook's Ad Delivery Can Lead to Biased Outcomes
Discrimination through Optimization: How Facebook's Ad Delivery Can Lead to Biased Outcomes Open
The enormous financial success of online advertising platforms is partially due to the precise targeting features they offer. Although researchers and journalists have found many ways that advertisers can target---or exclude---particular g…
View article: Discrimination through Optimization
Discrimination through Optimization Open
The enormous financial success of online advertising platforms is partially due to the precise targeting features they offer. Although researchers and journalists have found many ways that advertisers can target---or exclude---particular g…
View article: You Are Who You Appear to Be
You Are Who You Appear to Be Open
The public key infrastructure (PKI) provides the fundamental property of authentication: the means by which users can know with whom they are communicating online. The PKI ensures end-to-end authenticity insofar as it verifies a chain of c…
View article: RPKI is Coming of Age
RPKI is Coming of Age Open
Despite its critical role in Internet connectivity, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) remains highly vulnerable to attacks such as prefix hijacking, where an Autonomous System (AS) announces routes for IP space it does not control. To addr…
View article: A large-scale analysis of deployed traffic differentiation practices
A large-scale analysis of deployed traffic differentiation practices Open
Net neutrality has been the subject of considerable public debate over the past decade. Despite the potential impact on content providers and users, there is currently a lack of tools or data for stakeholders to independently audit the net…
View article: Auditing Offline Data Brokers via Facebook's Advertising Platform
Auditing Offline Data Brokers via Facebook's Advertising Platform Open
International audience
View article: Quantifying the Impact of User Attentionon Fair Group Representation in Ranked Lists
Quantifying the Impact of User Attentionon Fair Group Representation in Ranked Lists Open
In this work, we introduce a novel metric for auditing group fairness in ranked lists. Our approach offers two benefits compared to the state of the art. First, we offer a blueprint for modeling of user attention. Rather than assuming a lo…
View article: Discrimination through optimization: How Facebook's ad delivery can lead to skewed outcomes
Discrimination through optimization: How Facebook's ad delivery can lead to skewed outcomes Open
The enormous financial success of online advertising platforms is partially due to the precise targeting features they offer. Although researchers and journalists have found many ways that advertisers can target---or exclude---particular g…
View article: Quantifying the Impact of User Attention on Fair Group Representation in Ranked Lists
Quantifying the Impact of User Attention on Fair Group Representation in Ranked Lists Open
In this work, we introduce a novel metric for auditing group fairness in ranked lists. Our approach offers two benefits compared to the state of the art. First, we offer a blueprint for modeling of user attention. Rather than assuming a lo…
View article: Measuring the Facebook Advertising Ecosystem
Measuring the Facebook Advertising Ecosystem Open
International audience
View article: Analyzing Ethereum's Contract Topology
Analyzing Ethereum's Contract Topology Open
Ethereum is the second most valuable cryptocurrency today, with a current market cap of over $68B. What sets Ethereum apart from other cryptocurrencies is that it uses the blockchain to not only store a record of transactions, but also sma…
View article: Is the Web Ready for OCSP Must-Staple?
Is the Web Ready for OCSP Must-Staple? Open
TLS, the de facto standard protocol for securing communications over the Internet, relies on a hierarchy of certificates that bind names to public keys. Naturally, ensuring that the communicating parties are using only valid certificates i…
View article: Automated Attack Discovery in TCP Congestion Control Using a Model-guided Approach
Automated Attack Discovery in TCP Congestion Control Using a Model-guided Approach Open
In this work, we propose an automated method to find attacks against TCP congestion control implementations that combines the generality of implementation-agnostic fuzzing with the precision of runtime analysis. It uses a model-guided appr…
View article: A First Look at Certification Authority Authorization (CAA)
A First Look at Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) Open
Shaken by severe compromises, the Web’s Public Key Infrastructure has seen the addition of several security mechanisms over recent years. One such mechanism is the Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) DNS record, that gives domain n…
View article: Privacy Risks with Facebook's PII-Based Targeting: Auditing a Data Broker's Advertising Interface
Privacy Risks with Facebook's PII-Based Targeting: Auditing a Data Broker's Advertising Interface Open
Sites like Facebook and Google now serve as de facto data brokers, aggregating data on users for the purpose of implementing powerful advertising platforms. Historically, these services allowed advertisers to select which users see their a…
View article: Potential for discrimination in online targeted advertising
Potential for discrimination in online targeted advertising Open
International audience
View article: On Ridesharing Competition and Accessibility
On Ridesharing Competition and Accessibility Open
Ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft have become an important part of the Vehicle For Hire (VFH) market, which used to be dominated by taxis. Unfortunately, ridesharing services are not required to share data like taxi services, whic…