Computer Security and Privacy

Welcome to the webpage of the Computer Security and Privacy Research Group.

We are happy to be part of the Institute of Computer Science since 2018, the Campus Institute Data Science since 2020, and the Institute for Advanced Studies for Ethics of the Sciences since 2023. .

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News

  • Lindrit Kqiku

    NEW ARTICLE ACCEPTED

    Our paper “SensitivAlert: Image Sensitivity Prediction in Online Social Networks using Transformer-based Deep Learning Models” has been accepted for publication in the Proc. of the 18th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM). It is authored by L. Kqiku and D. Reinhardt

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    NEW ACCEPTED PUBLICATIONS

    Our research group has started this new and promising year with three accepted publications at IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom, Core A*) events. Luca Hernández Acosta will present our work “No Ears but Aware: Fingerprinting Attacks on Smart Speakers” in the PerCom WiP session. Chris Warin will talk about “PrivXR: A Cross-Platform Privacy-Preserving API and Privacy Panel for Extended Reality” in the same session. Sebastian Reinke will finally present his contribution entitled “Dear Robot, What Do You Know About Me? Enhancing Transparency in Presence of Robots” during the PerCom PhD Forum. Congratulations to all of you!

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    PRIVATAR project launch

    As coordinating university, we are very happy to share the launch of our project "Privacy-friendly Mobile Avatar for Sick Schoolchildren" (PRIVATAR) funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). This success is especially shared with Maren Bennewitz (The University of Bonn), Oliver Gerstheimer (chilli mind GmbH), and Michael Prilla (University of Duisburg-Essen).

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    IAS Fellow

    Prof. Dr. Delphine Reinhardt is fellow of the "Institute for Advanced Studies for Ethics of the Sciences" (IAS). It is a joint ''Wissenschaftskolleg'' for ethics in the sciences and humanities of Leibniz University Hannover (LUH), University of Göttingen (UG) and University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG).


  • Member of the ethics advisory board of "DeineStadt”

    Prof. Dr. Delphine Reinhardt is a member of the ethics advisory board of the BMBF research funding project “DeineStadt”. DeineStadt is a BMBF-funded research project for the user-centered development and testing of a participatory tool to playfully promote interactive and data-driven planning in municipalities. The project is carried out by TU Darmstadt, Wer denkt was GmbH, High Vision GmbH, and the City of Munich.

  • SUCCESSFUL PHD THESIS DEFENSE

    Alexander Richter successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Employees’ Acceptance of Smart Wearables in Germany: Privacy-preserving Solutions for Employees and Recommendations for Employers during the Deployment of Smart Watches in Smart Workplaces" on September, 13th, 2023. Congratulations Alex!

  • NEW ACCEPTED CONTRIBUTION

    We are happy to announce that our paper "A method like this would be overkill’": Developers' Perceived Issues with Privacy-preserving Computation Methods was accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom) angenommen wurde. It is authored by P. Kühtreiber, V. Pak, and D. Reinhardt.

  • ACCEPTED PAPER AT EuroUSEC

    Our paper "Vision: Supporting Citizens in Adopting Privacy Enhancing Technologies" has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 3rd European Symposium on Usable Security (EuroUSEC). It is authored by S. Shams and D. Reinhardt.

  • PET-CON 2023 in Göttingen

    We are organizing the 11th Privacy Enhancing Techniques Convention of the PET group of the GI in Göttingen. PET-CON is a free conference for interested students and young researchers. More information at https://pet-con.de.

  • NEW RESPONSIBILITIES

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt is the new director of the Institute of Computer Science. She was also elected as the “further member of dean's office” (eq. vice dean) of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science.

  • Re-elected as vice-speaker

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt was re-elected as vice-speaker of the Steering Committee of the "Security" Area of the German Informatics Society.

  • EDITOR FOR PERVASIVE AND MOBILE COMPUTING JOURNAL

    Prof. Delphine Reinhardt has joined the editorial board of Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC) in March 2023. Among others, the journal publishes selected papers of IEEE PerCom (CORE ranking A*).

  • PAPER ACCEPTED IN PMC

    Our paper “Lengthy Early Morning Instant Messages Reveal More Than You Think: Analysing Interpersonal Relationships using Mobile Communication Metadata” has been accepted for publication in Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC). It is authored by L. Kqiku and D. Reinhardt.

  • New Team Member

    We happily welcome Sönke Huster to our research group.

  • Congratulations to Dr. Tolsdorf!

    Jan is one of the 18 awardees of the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University Society in 2022 for his PhD thesis. More details in German are available here.

  • New DFG Project

    Our joint proposal entitled "ACHIEVE: A Common Evaluation Method for Simultaneous Privacy Protection and Collision Detection Performance of Cooperative Collision Avoidance Architectures for Vulnerable Road Users” has been accepted for funding by the DFG. We are happy to be able to work together with Prof. Dr. Klaus David and the Chair for Communication Technology (ComTec) at the University of Kassel.

  • Adding a new member to our group

    We are happy to announce that Shirin Shams has joined our research group. Welcome Shirin!

  • The research group is growing

    We are happy to welcome Sebastian Reinke in our research group.

  • NEW ACCEPTED CONTRIBUTION

    We are happy to announce that our paper “Privacy Estimation on Twitter: Modelling the Effect of Latent Topics on Privacy by Integrating XGBoost, Topic and Generalized Additive Models” has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on Privacy Computing. It is authored by A. Tillmann, L. Kqiku, D. Reinhardt, C. Weisser, B. Säfken, and T. Kneib and is the result of a collaboration within CIDAS and with TU Clausthal. The acceptance rate is 23%.

  • Paper accepted at NordSec

    Our paper "Data Privacy in Ride-Sharing Services: From an Analysis of Common Practices to Improvement of User Awareness” has been accepted for publication at the 27th Nordic Conference on Secure IT Systems (NordSec). It is a joint work between C. Hesselmann, D. Reinhardt, J. Gertheiss, and J. P. Müller. from TU Clausthal, Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg, and our group. The acceptance rate is 22%.

  • Paper accepted at MobiQuitous

    Our paper "Does Cycling Reveal Insights about You? Investigation of User and Environmental Characteristics during Cycling” authored by L. Hernández Acosta, S. Rahe and D. Reinhardt has been accepted for publication at MobiQuitous 2022. It is based on the results of a bachelor thesis conducted in our group.

  • New DFG Project

    Our proposal entitled "PrivacyON: Bridging the Gap between Society and the Privacy Ecosystem” has been accepted for funding by the DFG.

  • SUCCESSFUL PHD THESIS DEFENSE

    Jan Tolsdorf successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Investigation of Information Privacy in Employment: Fundamental Knowledge and Practical Solutions for the Human-Centered Design of Measures to Preserve the Right to Informational Self-Determination in Employment" on August, 8th, 2022. Congratulations Jan!

  • INVITATION BY THE HUMBOLDT FOUNDATION

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt is honoured to be invited to the next Indo-German Frontiers of Engineering Symposium (INDOGFOE) organised by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The symposium is by invitation only and a platform for the international and interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge between outstanding young scientists.

  • ACCEPTED ARTICLE IN PMC

    The article "A Survey on Solutions to Support Developers in Privacy-Preserving IoT Development" authored by P. Kühtreiber, V. Pak, and D. Reinhardt, has been accepted for publication in Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC).

  • NEW PAPER ACCEPTED

    We are happy to announce that our paper “Vision: Usable Privacy for XR in the Era of the Metaverse” has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 2nd European Symposium on Usable Security (EuroUSEC). It is authored by C. Warin and D. Reinhardt.

  • NEW ACCEPTED CONTRIBUTION

    Our paper “Exploration of a Mobile Design for a Privacy Assistant to Help Users in Sharing Content in Online Social Networks” has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 8. Usable Security und Privacy Workshop (MuC workshop). It is authored by L. Kqiku, J. Dieterle and D. Reinhardt.

  • PAPER ACCEPTED AT OASIS 2022

    Our paper “From Sentiment to Sensitivity: The Role of Emotions on Privacy Exposure in Twitter” has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Workshop on Open Challenges in Online Social Networks (OASIS, HT workshop). It is authored by L. Kqiku, M. Kühn, and D. Reinhardt.

  • ACCEPTED PAPER AT SOUPS 2022

    Our paper “Replication: The Effect of Differential Privacy Communication on German Users' Comprehension and Data Sharing Attitudes” has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of 18th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS). It is authored by P. Kühtreiber, V. Pak (one of our student assistants), and D. Reinhardt.

  • ACCEPTED ARTICLE IN ECIS

    Our work entitled "On the Impact of Information Provided to Employees on their Intention to Disclose Data Collected by Smart Watches to their Employers" authored by A. Richter, P. Kühtreiber and D. Reinhardt, has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings der 30th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2022).

  • Steering Committee of the GI/ITG Section "Communication and Distributed Systems"

    Prof. Dr. Delphine Reinhardt has been elected as a member of the Steering Committee of the GI/ITG Section "Communication and Distributed Systems” (KuVS) for the period 2022-2025.

  • SUCCESSFUL PHD THESIS DEFENSE

    Alexandr Railean successfully defended his PhD-thesis entitled "Improving IoT device transparency by means of privacy labels" on March, 28th, 2022. Congratulations Alexandr!

  • ACCEPTED PAPER AT IFIP SEC

    Our work entitled "Enhanced Privacy in Smart Workplaces: Employees' Preferences for Transparency Indicators and Control Interactions in the Case of Data Collection with Smart Watches" authored by A. Richter, P. Kühtreiber and D. Reinhard has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection (IFIP SEC 2022).

  • JOINT WORK WITH UNIVERSITY OF KASSEL ACCEPTED

    Our publication "Collisions Avoidance for Vulnerable Road Users: Privacy versus Survival?” resulting from a joint work with the ComTec group at the University of Kassel and authored by M. Bachmann, L. Hernández Acosta, J. Götz, D. Reinhardt, and K. David has been accepted for publication at the 5th International Workshop on Intelligent Transportation and Autonomous Vehicles Technologies (ITAVT) co-located with IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2022).

  • New Accepted Contribution

    The PhD Forum paper entitled "Enhanced Privacy for Voice-Controlled Digital Assistants" authored by Luca Hernández Acosta and Delphine Reinhardt, has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (PerCom PhD Forum 2022).

  • New Accepted Contribution

    The work in progress paper entitled "Multi-User Privacy with Voice-Controlled Digital Assistants" authored by Luca Hernández Acosta and Delphine Reinhardt, has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops (PerCom Workshops 2022).

  • New article accepted

    The article "Exploration of Factors that can Impact the Willingness of Employees to Share Smart Watch Data with their Employers", authored by A. Richter and D. Reinhardt, has been accepted for publication in the Post-Proceedings of the 16th IFIP International Summer School on Privacy and Identity Management.

  • THIRD ARTICLE ACCEPTED IN PERVASIVE AND MOBILE COMPUTING THIS YEAR

    The article "A Survey on Privacy Issues and Solutions for Voice-controlled Digital Assistants”, authored by Luca Hernández Acosta and Delphine Reinhardt, has been accepted for publication in Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC).

  • SECOND ACCEPTED ARTICLE TO APPEAR IN POPETS

    Our article "Employees’ Privacy Perceptions: Exploring the Dimensionality and Antecedents of Personal Data Sensitivity and Willingness to Disclose” has been accepted for publication in "Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies" (PoPETs), which is ranked A according to the CORE Ranking. It is authored by J. Tolsdorf, D. Reinhardt, and L. Lo Iacono from both our group and the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences.

  • SECOND ARTICLE ACCEPTED IN PERVASIVE AND MOBILE COMPUTING THIS YEAR

    The article entitled "Reconciling the What, When and How of Privacy Notifications in Fitness Tracking Scenarios” as a result of a collaboration with Karlstad University in Sweden is accepted for publication in Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC).

  • NEW ACCEPTED CONTRIBUTION

    The publication entitled "A User-Centric Privacy-Preserving Approach to Control Data Collection, Storage and Disclosure in Own Smart Home Environments” authored by Chathurangi Wickramasinghe and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt has been accepted for publication in the proceedings of the18th Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking and Services (MobiQuitous).

  • Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt is now IEEE Senior Member

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt has been elevated to the grade of IEEE Senior Member by IEEE. In 2019, only about 10% have reached this grade worldwide among more than 415,000 IEEE members. This grade recognises experience reflecting professional maturity and significant performance to engineers and scientists in IEEE-designated fields with at least 10 years professional experience. IEEE is the "world's largest technical professional organisation dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity”.

  • RE-ELECTED AS VICE DIRECTOR

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt has been re-elected as vice director by the Board of the Institute of Computer Science.

  • ARTICLE ACCEPTED IN PERVASIVE AND MOBILE COMPUTING

    The article entitled ""I still Need my Privacy": Exploring the Level of Comfort and Privacy Preferences of German-speaking Older Adults in the Case of Mobile Assistant Robots” authored by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt, Monisha Khurana, and Luca Hernández Acosta is accepted for publication in Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC).

  • PODCAST EPISODE

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt was a guest in the newest edition of the podcast series "CYBERSNACS" coordinated by the Alliance for Cyber Security (German Federal Office for Information Security) about instant messaging services. The podcast series addresses topics related to digitalization and cybersecurity in the business world.

  • NEW ACCEPTED CONTRIBUTION

    The publication entitled "Improving the Transparency of Privacy Terms Updates” authored by Alexandr Railean and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt has been accepted for presentation at the 9th Annual Privacy Forum (APF).

  • Publication accepted in PoPETs

    We are more than happy that our article "Exploring Mental Models of the Right to Informational Self-Determination of Office Workers in Germany” has been accepted for publication in "Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies" (PoPETs), the journal associated to the "Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium" (PETS). It is a joint work between J. Tolsdorf, F. Dehling, D. Reinhardt, and L. Lo Iacono from both our group and the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences. Out of 122 submitted articles, 21 have been accepted for this issue, resulting in an acceptance rate of 17%.

  • Usable Security and Privacy Day 2021

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt is co-organising the event taking place online on January, 21st. For (free) registration and additional information: https://uspday.odoo.com.

  • ARES 2021 PC Chair

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt is program committee chair of the 16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2021). We are already looking forward reading your submissions: https://www.ares-conference.eu.

  • NEW ACCEPTED ARTICLE

    The article entitled "Engineering Human-Machine Teams for Trusted Collaboration” written in collaboration with colleagues from TU Clausthal and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt has been accepted for publication in the journal on Big Data and Cognitive Computing.

  • We are hiring

    We have currently an open research assistant position in our group. If you are interested, you can find more information here.

  • Successful Defence of his PhD thesis

    Congratulations to Patrick Murmann for the successful defence of his PhD thesis entitled "Information at Your Fingertips - Facilitating Usable Transparency via Privacy Notifications" at Karlstad University. He has been visiting our research group in 2018 within the scope of the Privacy&US ITN project for his secondment and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt has been his second supervisor.

  • New Accepted Publication

    The work entitled "OnLITE: On-line Label for IoT Transparency Enhancement” conducted by Alexandr Railean and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt has been accepted for publication at the 25th Nordic Conference on Secure IT Systems (NordSec).

  • The research group is growing

    We are happy to welcome Patrick Kühtreiber as a new member of our research group.

  • Awarded the Johann Philipp Reis Prize 2019

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt was awarded the Johann-Philipp-Reis-Preis 2019 for outstanding innovative publications and her work in the area of privacy protection. This award is granted since 1986 by the cities of Friedrichsdorf in Taunus und Gelnhausen as well as Deutsche Telekom and Information Technology Society (ITG) of the German Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies (VDE) every two years.

  • The research group is growing

    We are happy to welcome two new members, Luca Hernández Acosta and Lindrit Kqiku, in our research group.

  • GI Security Conference in Göttingen in March 2020.

    We organise the "GI Security" Conference in Göttingen in March 2020. Information about this event can be found here.

  • Best Poster Demo Award won

    Alexandr Railean won the Best Poster Demo Award at the Privacy, Usability, and Transparency (PUT) Workshop co-located with the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium. His work entitled "OnLITE: Online Label For Internet of Things Transparency Enhancement" has been selected by the audience. Congratulations, Alexandr!

  • Named as a "Rising Star"

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt was named as one of the 10 global "Rising Stars in Networking and Communications" in 2019 by N2Women. Further information can be found here.

  • Elected as new vice director

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt was elected as vice director by the Board of the Institute of Computer Science.

  • Privacy&US a success story

    Privacy&US, one of the projects we are contributing as an academic partner, is featured in the EU Commission's Research and Innovation Success Stories. The article can be found here.

  • Admission to the Panel of Eminent Persons

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt is one of the members of the "Panel of Eminent Persons" nominated by the Cyber Security Cluster Bonn e.V.. Further members are Prof. Dr. Claudia Eckert (TUM & Fraunhofer AISEC), Prof. Dr. Matthias Hollick (TU Darmstadt), Prof. Dr. Norbert Pohlmann (Westfälische Hochschule), Prof. Dr. M. Angela Sasse (RUB), and Prof. Dr. Matthew Smith (Universität Bonn & Fraunhofer FKIE). The goal of this panel is to work on recommendations for politics and business in terms of cybersecurity. Further information can be found here.