Strong ProperData presence at PETS 2025

ProperData had a strong presence at this year’s 25th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), which took place July 14–19, 2025, in Washington, DC.

David, Athina, and Zubair co-organized PR2.
ProperData and friends at the welcome reception.
Hao Cui presenting his work on Web Forms Auditing as a way to understand Privacy Norms.
Ismat Jarin presenting BehaVR.
The UCI WiCyS delegation.
Isita Bagayatkar presenting DB-PAISA.
David Choffnes presenting “Gig Work at what Cost?”, joint work on behalf of Amogh Pradeep and Johanna Gunawan.
Zubair Shafiq introducing Paul Ohm before his keynote speech.
Reunion with ProperData graduates.
The UC Davis delegation.
PETS Keynote by Stephanie Nguyen.
Keynote citing Woodrow Hartzog’s book on “Privacy BluePrint”.
Breakouts in PR2.
Panel on Policy/Technology Collaboration in PR2.
Lightning talks in PR2.
Keynote by Jonathan Mayer at PR2 on how to pursue policy-relevant research.
Views of the Potomac River
Views of the Potomac River

PETS is a flagship annual event for the privacy community: it “brings together privacy experts from around the world to discuss recent advances and new perspectives on research in privacy technologies. PETS addresses the design and realization of privacy services for the Internet and other digital systems and communication networks.” Several ProperData faculty, researchers, students, and alumni attended PETS, presented their research, and led various activities.

Papers authored and presented by ProperData researchers at PETS 2025 include the following:

Beyond papers, ProperData members also participated in and led a range of PETS activities:

  • Policy-Relevant Privacy Research (PR2) Workshop: David Choffnes (Northeastern), Athina Markopoulou (UC Irvine), Zubair Shafiq (UC Davis), co-organized the first Policy-Relevant Privacy Research (PR2) Workshop, which took place on Monday, July 14. We leveraged this year’s PETS location (Washington, DC) to bring together privacy technologists and policy experts to work in an interactive setting, on informing and enforcing privacy policy, and holding tech accountable. The event was well attended and there was strong interest in making PR2 an annual event — stay tuned.
  • Zubair Shafiq served as PETS Program Co-Chair and PoPETS Co-Editor-in-Chief. Athina Markopoulou served as PC Vice Chair. Several of our faculty, researchers and graduates served on this year’s Program Committee.
  • Members served as session chairs, including Athina Markopoulou and Hieu Le for the sessions on “Federated and Distributed Learning” and “Voice Assistants and Video Conferencing”, respectively.

More importantly, it was a great opportunity to connect in-person with ProperData researchers across institutions, as well as alumni, old and new friends.