Columbia Engineering Researchers Develop XRay, First Step in
Understanding How Personal Data Is Being Used on Web Services like Google,
Amazon, and YouTube
The web can be an opaque black box: it leverages our
personal information without our knowledge or control. When, for instance, a
user sees an ad about depression online, she may not realize that she is seeing
it because she recently sent an email about being sad. Roxana Geambasu and
Augustin Chaintreau, both assistant professors of computer science at Columbia
Engineering, are seeking to change that, and in doing so bring more
transparency to the web. Along with their PhD student, Mathias Lecuyer, the
researchers have developed XRay, a new tool that reveals which data in a web
account, such as emails, searches, or viewed products, are being used to target
which outputs, such as ads, recommended products, or prices.