Helen Nissenbaum

Helen Nissenbaum is professor of information science at Cornell Tech.^[1] 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.^[2][3] Nissenbaum co-created the TrackMeNot and AdNauseam browser extensions, which demonstrated the use of obfuscation to maintain user privacy.

Helen Nissenbaum
Nissenbaum in 2008
Alma mater	Stanford University University of the Witwatersrand
Known for	Contextual integrity
Awards	Barwise Prize (2014)
Scientific career
Fields	Information science, Human–Computer Interaction, Privacy, Digital Media
Institutions	Cornell Tech
Website	nissenbaum.tech.cornell.edu

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 in the social science of education in 1978, and a PhD in philosophy in 1983.^[1]

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.^[4]

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.^[5] TrackMeNot uses the notion of privacy through obfuscation to protect the user against online identification, surveillance, and profiling. Adnostic^[6] was created in 2013 to enable online ad targeting without compromising user's privacy.^[7][8][9] AdNauseam, created in 2014, follows a similar obfuscation strategy for online ads.^[10]

Publications

Nissenbaum has written or edited a number of papers^[11] and books:

• Helen Nissenbaum (1986). Emotion and Focus. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780937073209.
• Johnson, Deborah G.; Nissenbaum, Helen, eds. (1995). Computers, Ethics & Social Values. Prentice Hall. ISBN 9780131031104.
• Nissenbaum, Helen; Price, Monroe E., eds. (2004). Academy & the Internet. Peter Lang. ISBN 9780820462035.
• Helen Nissenbaum (2009). Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804772891.
• Lane, Julia; Stodden, Victoria; Bender, Stefan; Nissenbaum, Helen, eds. (2014). Privacy, Big Data, and the Public Good: Frameworks for Engagement. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107067356.
• Mary Flanagan; Helen Nissenbaum (2014). Values at Play in Digital Games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262027663.
• Finn Brunton; Helen Nissenbaum (2015). Obfuscation: A User's Guide for Privacy and Protest. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262029735.

Honors and awards

• 2014 Barwise Prize of the American Philosophical Association^[12]
• 2017 honorary doctorate from the Leuphana University of Lüneburg^[13]
• 2019 distinguished fellow of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence^[14]
• 2021 Covey Award of the International Association of Computing and Philosophy