Project title: Privacy preserving targeting on the Internet

Supervisor name: Konstantina Papagiannaki, Nikolaos Laoutaris or someone with the same level of experience and/or expertise.

PhD enrolment: Y

Objectives: Development of algorithms and supporting measurement and inference system for

1. Measuring the extent of targeted advertising taking place on the wired and wireless web
2. Establishing causality between observed targeted advertisements and past browsing behavior, and
3. Developing tools and obfuscation techniques for preserving one’s privacy in view of the revealed targeted advertisement methods.

The candidate will be desirable to have background in, and will be exposed to various of the following fields: measurement techniques, information retrieval, artificial intelligence and learning, systems development, prototyping, and large scale experimental validation.

Tasks and methodology:

• Development of algorithms and supporting measurement and inference system for 1) measuring the extent of targeted advertising taking place on the wired and wireless web
• Establishing causality between observed targeted advertisements and past browsing behavior
• Developing tools and obfuscation techniques for preserving one’s privacy in view of the revealed targeted advertisement methods

Results: A privacy preserving framework for targeting on the Internet
This task will contribute to design the tools for data processing and evaluate the results.

Dissemination: Scientific publications, communication of results internally to Telefonica

Planned secondment: UC3M
The ESR will benefit from the training given in UC3M measurement tools using new methods that can obtain information about user location and browsing behaviour.