Maria Sameen

maria.sameen@bristol.ac.uk	Year 4 Student – 2021 Intake – Cohort 3 I received a B.S. degree in Computer Science from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi, Pakistan, in 2018, and an M.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Gachon University, South Korea, in 2021. I have also worked as a Graduate Research Student in an AI-based Cyber Security field at Information Security and Machine Learning Laboratory, Gachon University. My current research interests include Dark Patterns and their efficient detection. My PhD research also examines the design processes, ethics, and implications of practicing dark patterns.
PhD Project	3Ds of Dark Patterns With the increase in online activities and engagements, people have started to heavily rely on digital platforms for almost every other activity be it financial transactions, grocery shopping, or even contacting their loved ones. Hence with this attention of people towards digital platforms, various digital service providers have started different practices either to attract more people or keep people engaged on their digital platforms, etc. Thus, service providers have started to employ dark patterns on their digital platforms. Likewise, one of the digital platforms, that gained significant attention from people in a couple of years, is video games. To date, most people perceive video games as an amusement digital platform. However, the reality of video games is more than that, i.e., video games nowadays connect people over distances. Even other digital platforms these days employ gamification techniques to grab the similar attention and focus/retention, the video games are getting at present. Thus, several studies showed that video games managed to get this limelight because they are manifested with various dark patterns. Hence, this PhD is primarily aimed at understanding different video game designs concerning dark patterns, which often go unnoticed by the players. Consequently, persuading players to do something or tempting/tricking them into believing in the in-game things seamlessly. In addition, the focus of this doctorate study is to comprehend design practices from two key stakeholders' perspectives, i.e., video game players and developers. Thus, to study how, what, when, where, and why certain practices are followed at the backend in contrast to how, what, when, where, and up to what extent those practices are experienced/affected as a result of frontend in video games. Supervisors: Professor Awais Rashid (Bristol) Dr Ryan McConville (Bristol)
PhD Poster	View poster here
Events Attended	Conferences: ACM CCS, Seoul, Republic of Korea, Nov 2021 NCSC ACE-CSR, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, June 2022 Euro S&P, Delft, The Netherlands, Jul 2023 PETS, Lausanne, Switzerland, Jul 2023 Women in Cyber (Rolls-Royce Group), Filton, UK, Aug 2023 Devcom, Cologne, Germany, Aug 2023 Workshops: 28th International Workshop on Security Protocols, Trinity College, Cambridge, UK, Mar 2023 IWPE, Delft, The Netherlands, Jul 2023 Talks: USENIX Conference on PEPR, Santa Clara, CA, USA, Jun, 2022 HotPETs, Lausanne, Switzerland, Jul 2023 Summer Schools: UCL 2022, RHUL 2023 REPHRAIN: Showcase, Sandpit, and All Hands Meeting - Mar 2022, Jan 2023, Jun 2023 Invited Industry Visits: HP Labs, Bristol, May 2022 Thales, Reading, UK, Apr 2022 BT, Ipswich, UK, Mar 2023
Year 1 Academic and Industry Placements	Academic Placement Organization: University of Bristol Title of placement research topic: Building a software dark patterns dataset Industry Placement Organization: Ofcom Title of placement research topic: Choice Architecture in Online Platforms
Publications and Presented Papers	Dataveillance: An Overlooked Side of Dark Patterns Sameen, M. & Rashid, A., 14 Jul 2023 Research output: Other contribution Threat Models over Space and Time: A Case Study of E2EE Messaging Applications Das Chowdhury, P., Sameen, M., Blessing, J., Boucher, N., Gardiner, J., Burrows, T., Anderson, R. & Rashid, A., 2023, International Workshop on Privacy Engineering (Co-located with Euro SnP). Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference Contribution (Conference Proceeding) Towards Human-Centric Endpoint Security Das Chowdhury, P., Blessing, J., Sameen, M., Anderson, R., Gardiner, J. & Rashid, A., 27 Jan 2023, (Accepted/In press) Proceedings of the International Security Protocols Workshop. Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference Contribution (Conference Proceeding) Chowdhury, P. D., Sameen, M., Blessing, J., Boucher, N., Gardiner, J., Burrows, T., Anderson, R., & Rashid, A. (2023). Threat Models over Space and Time: A Case Study of E2EE Messaging Applications. ArXiv. /abs/2301.05653 Building a Privacy Testbed Das Chowdhury, P., Gardiner, J., Sameen, M., Alhindi, M. K. M., Peden, G. J., Ellis, W. E. H. V., Mazeli, A. C., Tahaei, M. & Rashid, A., 2022, (Accepted/In press) 2022 USENIX Conference on Privacy Engineering Practice and Respect. USENIX Association Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference Contribution (Conference Proceeding)