Toronto Networking Seminar

Organized by Department of Computer Science and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto




ISP-Enabled Behavioral Ad Targeting without
User Consent (and Beyond)


Aleksandar Kuzmanovic
Northwestern University
 

Date: Friday, September 25, 2pm
Location: BA 1210 

Abstract:

In this talk, accessible to everyone, I will present ongoing research projects from the Northwestern Networks Group. In the first part of the talk, I will explain how you can use search engines to accurately classify Internet endpoints. Next, I will talk about the ISP-enabled behavioral ad targeting problem. In particular, I will explain how it is possible to extract user browsing patterns without violating wiretap laws which explicitly prohibit intercepting the contents of communication. In the second part of the talk, I will present our recent work on 'serendipitous' location-based services, i.e., those that foster accidental discovery of people, businesses and other locations around users that match their interests. I will particularly focus on characterizing the relationship between people's application interests and mobility properties that we found by studying a population of over 280,000 users of a 3G mobile network in a large metropolitan area. Finally, I will briefly present our initial efforts on designing an infrastructure-less indoor positioning system.

Bio:

Aleksandar Kuzmanovic is an Assistant Professor in the EECS Department  at Northwestern University. His research interests are in the area of computer networking with emphasis on design, measurements, analysis, denial-of-service resiliency, and prototype implementation of protocols  and algorithms for the Internet. He joined the Northwestern faculty in  2005 after receiving a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Rice University, under the direction of Prof. Ed Knightly. He received the NSF CAREER award in 2008.

Host of the talk

Jörg Liebeherr (jorg@comm.toronto.edu)