Helen Nissenbaum


Helen Nissenbaum is professor of information science at Cornell Tech. She is best known for the concept of "contextual integrity" and her work on privacy, privacy law, trust, and security in the online world. Specifically, contextual integrity has influenced the United States government's thinking about privacy issues. Nissenbaum co-created the TrackMeNot and AdNauseam browser extensions, which demonstrated the use of obfuscation to maintain user privacy.

Early life and education

Nissenbaum studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, graduating in 1976. She then went on to study at Stanford University, where she completed a master's degree in the social science of education in 1978, and a PhD in philosophy in 1983.

Work

Grants

Nissenbaum has received grants from the National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Ford Foundation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Browser extensions

She has also contributed to several browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome. TrackMeNot was the first extension that she co-created in 2006. TrackMeNot uses the notion of privacy through obfuscation to protect the user against online identification, surveillance, and profiling. Adnostic was created in 2013 to enable online ad targeting without compromising user's privacy. AdNauseam, created in 2014, follows a similar obfuscation strategy for online ads.

Publications

Nissenbaum has written or edited a number of papers and books:
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Honors and awards