Kami Vaniea

Kami Vaniea is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Professor Vaniea's research interests are in the human factors of security and privacy. The goal of her work is to increase accessibility of security and privacy technologies for a wide range of users including end users, developers, and system administrators. Professor Vaniea's recent projects include: developer-centered privacy, dynamic phishing advice, smart speaker bystander privacy, understanding barriers to software update installation, and people's misunderstanding of Twitter's privacy settings.

• Usable Security and Privacy
• Cybersecurity
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Information Security
• Authorization and Access Control
• Internet of Things
• System Administration

• 2012, Doctor of Philosophy, Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
• 2005, Bachelor of Science, Computer Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR

• ECE 458 - Computer Security
  • Taught in 2024
• ECE 750 - Special Topics in Computer Software
  • Taught in 2024

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• D. Kirkman, K. Vaniea, D.W. Woods; DarkDialogs: Automated detection of 10 dark patterns on cookie dialogs; In Proceedings of the 8th IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroSP'23). 2023.
• M. Tahaei, K. Vaniea, A. Rashid;Embedding Privacy Into Design Through Software Developers: Challenges and Solutions; In IEEE Security & Privacy. 2023.
• N. Meng-Schneider, R. Yasa Kostas, K. Vaniea, M.K. Wolters; Multi-User Smart Speakers - A Narrative Review of Concerns and Problematic Interactions; In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2023.
• Twitter has a Binary Privacy Setting, are Users Aware of How It Works? [bibtex] D. Keküllüoğlu, K. Vaniea, M.K. Wolters, W. Magdy; In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW23). 2023.
• K. Althobaiti, M.K. Wolters, N. Alsufyani, K. Vaniea; Using Clustering Algorithms to Automatically Identify Phishing Campaigns; In IEEE Access. 2023.
• N. Pilavakis, A. Jenkins, N. Kokciyan, K. Vaniea; "I didn't click": What users say when reporting phishing; In Proceedings of the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (USEC'23). 2023.
• F. Mathis, K. Vaniea, M. Khamis; Can I Borrow Your ATM? Using Virtual Reality for (Simulated) In Situ Authentication Research; In Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR). 2022.
• D. Keküllüoğlu, W. Magdy, K. Vaniea; From an Authentication Question to a Public Social Event: Characterizing Birthday Sharing on Twitter; In Proceedings of The 16th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM'22). 2022.
• M. Tahaei, K. Vaniea; Recruiting Participants with Programming Skills: A Comparison of Four Crowdsourcing Platforms and a CS Student Mailing List; In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2022.