Ad-network Tomography
On today’s show, our guests are Maaz Bin Musa, a Ph.D. student at the University of Iowa, and Rishab Nithyanand, a professor at the University of Iowa. Maaz’s research focuses on auditing data-sharing ecosystems online. He has recently been working on the compliance side of data sharing auditing as well. Professor Rishab mainly focuses on internet measurement and how data sharing affects users’ experience. They discussed their latest research on data sharing transparency.
Maaz started with how he got into data sharing as a field. He gave further insight into data sharing, and how advertisers exploit the data for targeted ads across multiple websites. He also spoke about the legal restrictions by regulators such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Rishab further spoke on the duties of these regulators in the ecosystem.
Given that the data sharing operations are mostly private, Maaz and Rishab discussed the need to have more transparency.
Maaz then explained why transparent frameworks are critical in ad technology. Rishab emphasized that ad tech is the reason there are incredible services online for free. However, ad tech lacks transparency and control.
They then spoke about the ATOM project. ATOM basically focuses on uncovering the data-sharing relationships that happen when your data is gathered. They spoke about how ATOM was built — the data gathering process, analysis, model training, and evaluation. Rishab extensively discussed how ATOM finds data-sharing relationships in Ad-tech. Some of the advertisers used for the study include Alphabet, GumGum, Facebook, and OpenX.
They both spoke about their discovery regarding data sharing and the relationships inferred. Rishab particularly pointed out an important revelation from their results. They also gave suggestions for a more transparent data-sharing process. Wrapping up, they discussed the future for ATOM. You can follow Maaz Bin Musa on Twitter or LinkedIn or send him an email. Rishab is on Twitter @rishabn_.
Maaz Bin Musa
I am currently a fourth year PhD student at the University of Iowa Department of Computer Science under the supervision of Dr. Rishab Nithyanand. I am a Research Assistant at Security, Privacy, and Anonymity Research Team (SPARTA Lab). I enjoy research around data flows in online eco-systems such as measuring advertising and tracking online, tracking data misuse on social media etc. Recently, I have also started research on the compliance of data rights policies surrounding these data flows as well.
Rishab Nithyanand
Rishab Nithyanand is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Iowa where he leads the Security, Privacy, and Anonymity Research Team (SPARTA) Lab.
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