About me

I am a Postdoctoral Associate at New York University Abu Dhabi, where I work with Sandra Siby in the HAVEN Lab. My research focuses on identifying security, privacy, and other types of online harms on the web. My research involves building automated systems using automated crawling and browser instrumentation to conduct large-scale empirical measurements of real-world systems.

My recent work includes studying how web privacy and security practices vary across geographic regions, auditing how cross-site tracking can influence YouTube recommendations, measuring online job scams targeting users, and exploring the use of web agents as automated crawlers for security and privacy measurements.

I obtained my Ph.D. from Ecole Polytechnique Paris and CNRS, at the CEDAR team, under the supervision of Oana Goga.

My Ph.D. thesis, titled “Computational Methods for Analyzing Risks with Information Exposure on Social Media”, focused on exploring risks associated with the online spread of information. I build and applied data-driven quantitative methodologies to collect and analyze large scale data from online systems. For instance, I built CheckMyNews, a software designed to automatically scrape and collect user data from online platforms, enabling external researchers to evaluate risks associated with these platforms.

Alongside my thesis, I also researched the privacy impact of advertising systems employed by privacy-focused search engines. I employed an automated crawling methodology to identify instances of online tracking when users interact with advertisements.

Prior to my thesis, I graduated as a Computer Science Engineer from the Higher National School of Computer Science ( ESI ) of Algiers (Algeria) in 2020. I did my final year internship at the Grenoble Informatics Laboratory in Grenoble (France).

Publications

• NewsDB: An Automated Approach to Build an Extensive Database of Self-Proclaimed News Providers
  Salim Chouaki, Minh-Kha Nguyen, Laura Edelson, Oana Goga, Tobias Lauinger, Damon McCoy
  Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2026)
  PDF Code Data
• A Comparative Study of News Exposure and Consumption On and Off Facebook
  Nardjes Amieur, Salim Chouaki, Oana Goga, Beatrice Roussillon
  ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2025)
  PDF Code Data
• What News Do People Get on Social Media? Analyzing Exposure and Consumption of News through Data Donations
  Salim Chouaki, Abhijnan Chakraborty, Oana Goga, Savvas Zannettou
  ACM The Web Conference 2024
  PDF Code Data
• Understanding the privacy risks of popular search engine advertising systems
  Salim Chouaki, Oana Goga, Hamed Haddadi, Peter Snyder
  ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC 2023)
  PDF Code Data
• Exploring the Online Micro-targeting Practices of Small, Medium, and Large Businesses
  Salim Chouaki, Islem Bouzenia, Oana Goga, Beatrice Roussillon
  ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2022)
  PDF Code

Teaching

• 01/2026 - 05/2026 – Web Privacy
  Undergraduate course at New York University Abu Dhabi.
  • In charge of lab sessions throughout the semester, including in-class instruction, student supervision, and a guest lecture.
  • Designed lab exercises and student assignments covering topics such as cookie-based tracking, browser fingerprinting, cookie syncing, and filter lists.
  • Designed the course project and grading rubric, and graded student assignments and final projects, including reports, source code, and collected datasets.
• 09/2023 - 12/2023 – Programming in C++
  Undergraduate course at the Paris National School of Statistics and Economic Management (ENSAE Paris).
  • In charge of laboratory sessions focused on basic programming concepts and practical development in C++.
  • Guided students through programming exercises, program design, debugging, and implementation, and graded their assignments.
• 01/2023 - 05/2023 – Programming project in Python
  Undergraduate course at the Paris National School of Statistics and Economic Management (ENSAE Paris).
  • In charge of laboratory sessions for a semester-long programming project using Python.
  • The project focused on finding shortest paths in graphs under a specific distance metric, followed by an extension on path optimization under budget constraints.
  • Introduced students to relevant graph theory concepts and guided them through designing algorithms, analyzing their computational complexity, implementing them in Python, and debugging their solutions.
  • Graded students' final submissions, including their code and project reports.

Blogging

• Private search engines and traditional advertising platforms: uncovering the privacy risks
  Trustaware - October 2023
• Economic benefits vs Privacy concerns: the challenge with regulating online advertising
  Trustaware - November 2022

Service to the Community

• Organization
  • 2026 – Co-Organizer, Applied Research Competition, CSAW (Cybersecurity Awareness Worldwide) MENA, New York University Abu Dhabi.
  • 2025 – Co-Organizer, Applied Research Competition, CSAW (Cybersecurity Awareness Worldwide) MENA, New York University Abu Dhabi.
• Program Committee
  • 2026 – Program Committee Member, Workshop on Measurements, Attacks, and Defenses for the Web (MADWeb) , co-located with NDSS 2026.
• Reviewing
  • 2026 – Reviewer, International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM).
  • 2026 – Reviewer, ACM Transactions on the Web (TWEB), for multiple manuscripts.
  • 2025 – Reviewer, ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC).