Arvind Narayanan

Arvind Narayanan is a Princeton computer scientist whose work spans security, privacy, technology policy, and the societal effects of digital systems. Princeton identifies security and privacy among his research areas and describes his work on how companies collect and use personal information.

Testing anonymity claims

With Vitaly Shmatikov, Narayanan published an analysis of the Netflix Prize dataset showing how auxiliary information could re-identify records thought to be anonymous. It remains a clear demonstration that privacy protections must be tested against realistic outside knowledge.

Measurement and accountability

His work also includes web measurement and accountability research, connecting technical findings to questions about the collection and use of personal data.

Timeline

• 2006Co-authors research on de-anonymizing the Netflix Prize dataset.
• 2009Completes a Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin.
• 2010sLeads and contributes to Princeton web-transparency and privacy research.
• 2020sServes as director of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy.