Timothy Libert
Recent Highlights:
- Op-Ed: This Article is Spying on You, The New York Times, 2019.
- Academic Article: Good News for People Who Love Bad News: Centralization, Privacy, and Transparency on US News Sites, Timothy Libert, Reuben Binns, ACM Conference on Web Science, 2019.
- Press Coverage: How top health websites are sharing sensitive data with advertisers, Financial Times, 2019 (uses webXray for investigation).
Topical Work:
- Privacy Implications of Health Information Seeking on the Web , Timothy Libert, Communications of the ACM, 2015.
- What web browsing reveals about your health , Timothy Libert, David Grande, David Asch, The British Medical Journal (BMJ), 2015.
Short Biography
Timothy Libert is a faculty member in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University where he teaches in the Privacy Engineering program. His research focuses on large-scale quantitative measurement of the societal impacts of privacy-compromising information flows on the web. He has published in The Web Conference (WWW), Web Science, New Media and Society, The Communications of the ACM, The BMJ (British Medical Journal), and other venues. His research has received international press coverage, he has been interviewed by National Public Radio's All Things Considered, Good Morning America, and other outlets, and he has written editorials in The New York Times and The Guardian. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and has previously held research positions at the University of Oxford, Central European University, and the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society.
A Photograph of Me Wearing a Tweed Jacket
Current professional titles:
- Special Faculty, Privacy Engineering, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.
- Core Faculty, CyLab Security and Privacy Institute, Carnegie Mellon University.
- Co-Founder and Chief Technologist, webXray.eu.
Former professional titles:
- Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Oxford.
- Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Pennsylvania.
- Research Fellow, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society.
- Research Fellow, Center for Media, Data, and Society, Central European University.
Education:
- Doctor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, 2017.
- Master of Arts, University of Pennsylvania, 2014.
- Bachelor of Arts, New York University, 2004.
How to contact me:
-
Cyberspace
timlibert@cmu.edu
-
Meatspace
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
4720 Forbes Avenue, Office 2125
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Office hours by appointment
The following are courses I teach or co-teach:
- Current Topics in Privacy
- Engineering Privacy in Software
- Privacy by Design
- Privacy Policy, Law, and Technology
- Information Technology Policy: Evidence, Communication, & Advocacy
The following are research manuscripts I wrote or co-wrote:
- Good News for People Who Love Bad News: Centralization, Privacy, and Transparency on US News Sites, Timothy Libert, Reuben Binns, ACM Conference on Web Science, 2019.
- Tracking sex: The implications of widespread sexual data leakage and tracking on porn websites Elena Maris, Timothy Libert, Jennifer Henrichsen, Preprint, 2019.
- An Automated Approach to Auditing Disclosure of Third-Party Data Collection in Website Privacy Policies, Timothy Libert, The Web Conference (WWW2018), 2018. Best Paper Nominee.
- Third Party Tracking in the Mobile Ecosystem, Reuben Binns, Ulrik Lyngs, Max Van Kleek, Jun Zhao, Timothy Libert, Nigel Shadbolt, ACM Conference on Web Science, 2018. Best Paper.
- Track the Planet: A Web-Scale Analysis of How Online Behavioral Advertising Violates Social Norms (Dissertation), Timothy Libert, 2017.
- Privacy Implications of Health Information Seeking on the Web, Timothy Libert, Communications of the ACM, 2015.
- What web browsing reveals about your health, Timothy Libert, David Grande, David Asch, The British Medical Journal (BMJ), 2015.
- Exposing the Hidden Web: Third-Party HTTP Requests On One Million Websites, Timothy Libert, International Journal of Communication, 2015.
- Most research data is available on request, please see my curriculum vitæ for papers in review and revision.
Work with me:
- I routinely have positions available to conduct research on third-party tracking attribution, privacy, and distributed web measurement. If you are a Carnegie Mellon student eligible for employment please contact me. If you are not a Carnegie Mellon student I unfortunately cannot hire you.
- If you'd like to propose a collaboration, please contact me: timlibert@cmu.edu.
- If you'd like to work on open-source projects, see below.
The following are software tools I have released open-souce:
The following are white papers I wrote, co-wrote, or contributed to:
- Changes in Third-Party Content on European News Websites after GDPR, Timothy Libert, Lucas Graves, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, 2018.
- Third-Party Web Content on EU News Sites: Potential Challenges and Paths to Privacy Improvement, Timothy Libert and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford, 2018.
- Data and Discrimination: Collected Essays, Various Authors, Open Technology Institute / New America Foundation, 2014
The following are editorial pieces I wrote or co-wrote:
- This Article is Spying on You, The New York Times, 2019
- Google is returning to China? It never really left, The Guardian, 2015.
- Think you’re reading the news for free? New research shows you’re likely paying with your privacy, The Conversation, 2015.
My work has been covered extensively in the popular press, as detailed on my curriculum vitæ. Some highlights are:
- My 2015 interview on NPR about online health privacy
- Sciencenews on my 2018 privacy policy study
- Vice on my 2015 online health privacy research
- Wired Italy on my 2015 million site study