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Helen Nissenbaum

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Helen Nissenbaum
Nissenbaum in 2008
EducationUniversity of the Witwatersrand
Stanford University
Known forContextual integrity
AwardsBarwise Prize (2014)
Scientific career
FieldsInformation science, Human–Computer Interaction, Privacy, Digital Media
WorkplacesCornell Tech
Websitenissenbaum.tech.cornell.edu

Helen Fay Nissenbaum is the Andrew H. and Ann R. Tisch Chaired 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.

Early life and education

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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 degree in the social science of education in 1978, and a PhD in philosophy in 1983.[4]

Work

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Grants

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Nissenbaum has received grants from the National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.[5]

In 2018, Nissenbaum was invited to serve on the first ever external ethics Advisory Panel for Artificial Intelligence at SAP SE —the first European technology company to have an external AI ethics advisory panel.[6]

Contextual Integrity

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Nissenbaum is well known as the creator of the contextual integrity benchmark for privacy as an alternative to theories of privacy grounded in secrecy, data minimization, or procedural models based exclusively on notice-consent practices or encryption. One author stated that her article “Privacy as Contextual Integrity" has been "arguably the most influential article ever written about privacy in terms of shaping the direction of privacy research and its literature.”[7]

Contextual integrity is defined as the appropriate flow of information from one party to the next, where what is appropriate is based on the social norms and expectations of an informational context. [8] Social life and information happen in many contexts, not one context, and Nissenbaum argues that information flows should not be flowing into one undifferentiated pool but treated differently based on the context of transfer.[9]

In Nissenbaum's model the particular context of an information flow is specified according to the five parameters of type of information, data subject, data sender, data recipient, and the transmission principle or understood constraints.[10] Contextual integrity aims at user confidence that expectations around information sharing are generally met. Its "clear methodology and simple step-by-step framework" have garnered significant popularity including use by the Federal Trade Commission and a 2014 recommendation by the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.[11]

The reliance on social norms which are inherently constructed, fungible, and contested has made some scholars question the viability of contextual integrity as a model that can support the creation of regulatory policy. [12] Similarly, some critics have authored that it cannot be used to evaluate socially disruptive technologies precisely because emerging technologies which disrupt and cause norms in a given context cannot have sufficiently stable, shared expectations around information flows for CI to be an effective tool to assess what constitutes a privacy violation.[13]

Ethics and Practices of Obfuscation

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Nissenbaum has advocated in writing for obfuscation practices.[14] Obfuscation strategies intentionally add extra information that dilutes the truthfulness and accuracy of information flows and disrupt data profiling and surveillance practices. On the internet, direct observation of user behavior cannot be avoided and many companies disregard regulatory and technical means by which individual users attempt to reject or turn off tracking. Given slow change in the regulatory environment and the inadequacy of notification-consent models of privacy to protect user interests, Nissenbaum justifies poisoning data through obfuscation “because of the asymmetrical power relations that have led to near total surveillance.”[15] Obfuscation isn’t offered as a solution, but as a form of small scale resistance to users under duress.[16] Obfuscation ultimately relies on other people not practicing obfuscation or the dissolution of a targeted advertising model of content-funding.

Browser extensions

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She has also contributed to several browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome. TrackMeNot was the first extension that she co-created in 2006.[17] TrackMeNot uses the notion of privacy through obfuscation to protect the user against online identification, surveillance, and profiling. Adnostic[18] was created in 2013 to enable online ad targeting without compromising user's privacy.[19][20][21]

AdNauseam, created in 2014, follows a similar obfuscation strategy for online ads.[22] This plugin also pollutes the data gathered about user behavior in order to make it too difficult to create a user profile. It functions by clicking or opening all the ads on a viewed page that ignore a user’s Do Not Track preference in the background and introducing incorrect information about user preferences into web tracking systems. A user that opens all ads is as effectively targeted as a user who clicks none of them: because a specification of interests can’t be generated from this all-or-nothing behavior. This plugin was banned from the Chrome Web Store in 2017[23] and subsequently marked as malware to prevent installation through developer mode.

Publications

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Nissenbaum has written or edited a number of papers[24] 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.
  • Nissenbaum, Helen (2004), "Privacy as contextual integrity", Washington Law Review, vol. 79, p. 119
  • 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, eds. (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.
  • Nissenbaum, Helen, Katherine Strandburg, and Salomé Viljoen. "The great regulatory dodge." Harvard Journal of Law & Technology. 37 (2023): 1231.
  • Engelmann, Severin, and Helen Nissenbaum. "Countering Privacy Nihilism." arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.18253 (2025).

Honors and awards

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References

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  1. ↑ "Helen Nissenbaum Named Andrew H. and Ann R. Tisch Chaired Professor at Cornell Tech". tech.cornell.edu. Retrieved 2026-08-10.
  2. ↑ Alexis Madrigal (29 March 2012). "The Philosopher Whose Fingerprints Are All Over the FTC's New Approach to Privacy". The Atlantic. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
  3. ↑ "CV Helen Nissenbaum". New York University. Retrieved 2013-04-11.
  4. ↑ "Helen Nissenbaum". nissenbaum.tech.cornell.edu. Retrieved 2017-12-14.
  5. ↑ "Helen Nissenbaum Bio". New York University. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
  6. ↑ "Press Release: SAP Becomes First European Tech Company to Create Ethics Advisory Panel for Artificial Intelligence". Dow Jones Institutional News. 2018-09-18.
  7. ↑ Blanke, Jordan (2021). "Top Ten Reasons to Be Optimistic About Privacy". Idaho Law Review. 55 (3): 284.
  8. ↑ Malkin, N (2022). "Contextual integrity, explained: A more usable privacy definition" (PDF). IEEE Security & Privacy. 21 (1): 58-65.
  9. ↑ Wolman, Michael (2024-03-19). "'People conflate privacy with secrecy' — An Interview with Good Systems Symposium Keynote Speaker Helen Nissenbaum". Bridging Barriers -- News. University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved 2026-08-10.
  10. ↑ Malkin, N (2022). "Contextual integrity, explained: A more usable privacy definition" (PDF). IEEE Security & Privacy. 21 (1): 61.
  11. ↑ Prégent, Alexandra (2025). "Why you Should not use CI to Evaluate Socially Disruptive Technology" (PDF). Philosophy & Technology. 38 (6). doi:10.1007/s13347-025-00838-z.
  12. ↑ Rule, J.B. (2019). "Contextual Integrity and its Discontents: A Critique of Helen Nissenbaum's Normative Arguments". Policy & Internet. 11: 260-279.
  13. ↑ Prégent, Alexandra (2025). "Why you Should not use CI to Evaluate Socially Disruptive Technology" (PDF). Philosophy & Technology. 38 (6). doi:10.1007/s13347-025-00838-z.
  14. ↑ Brunton, Finn; Nissenbaum, Helen (2015). Obfuscation: A User's Guide for Privacy and Protest. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262029735.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  15. ↑ Sylvia, J (2021). Franna, Philip; Klien, Michael (eds.). Nissenbaum, Helen (1954–) in Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence : The Past, Present, and Future of AI. Santa Barbara, CA. pp. 250–252. ISBN 978-1-4408-5327-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  16. ↑ Uchill, Joe (2015-11-16). "How to hide your digital trail in plain sight". The Christian Science Monitor.
  17. ↑ Howe, Daniel C. (2016). "Surveillance Countermeasures: Expressive Privacy via Obfuscation". aprja.net. APRJA. Retrieved 14 November 2016. Some critics questioned TrackMeNot's effectiveness against machine-learning attacks, some cast it as a misuse of bandwidth, and others found it unethical.
  18. ↑ "Adnostic: Privacy Preserving Targeted Advertising". crypto.stanford.edu. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  19. ↑ Nissenbaum, Helen. "From preemption to circumvention" (PDF). Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  20. ↑ Toubiana, Vincent; Narayanan, Arvind; Boneh, Dan; Nissenbaum, Helen; Barocas, Solon (1 March 2010). "Adnostic: Privacy Preserving Targeted Advertising". Network and Distributed System Security Symposium. Internet Society. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  21. ↑ Nissenbaum, Helen (Fall 2011). "A Contextual Approach to Privacy Online" (PDF). Daedalus. 140 (4). Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts & Sciences: 32–48. doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00113. S2CID 207589315. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  22. ↑ Defer, Aurélien (30 April 2022). "Internet users are 'poisoning' their personal data in the fight against online surveillance". Le Monde. Retrieved 18 December 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  23. ↑ Brady, Dale (2017-01-05). "Tracking Tricker AdNauseeam Removed from the Chrome Store". The New York Observer.
  24. ↑ "Curriculum Vitae: Articles". Helen Nissenbaum. tech.cornell.edu. Retrieved 26 August 2021.
  25. ↑ "K. Jon Barwise Prize". American Philosophical Association. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  26. ↑ "Honorary Doctorates". Leuphana Universität Lüneburg. Archived from the original on 19 July 2021. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
  27. ↑ "Distinguished Fellows". Stanford HAI. Retrieved 20 December 2020.
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