Ashkan Soltani has more than 20 years of experience as a technology consultant. His research examines the prevalence of online tracking and exposes practices designed to circumvent consumer privacy choices. His work raises awareness of privacy issues by providing information and tools that help individual consumers understand data security. Journalists and policymakers frequently cite his research on online tracking, data collection and privacy.
In 2009, he published KnowPrivacy with colleagues at UC Berkeley School of Information. The findings in this paper led to his role as the primary technical consultant for the Wall Street Journal: What They Know series investigating internet privacy and online tracking. This series was a finalist for 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and the winner of the 2012 Scripps Howard Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment. He also wrote software that aggregated media appearances and other relevant data for a Pulitzer-winning story, One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex.
As part of his effort to demystify technology, Ashkan developed an app called MobileScope that allows users to track what data their mobile apps transmit and where the device sends it. The MobileScope Project was named the winner of the Wall Street Journal’s 2012 Data Transparency Prize and developed into a full-feature platform which was recently aquired by Evidon.
Considered one of the leading experts on privacy and technology, Ashkan has appeared as an independent witness before both the Senate Commerce and Senate Judiciary Committees on the The State of Online Consumer Privacy and Protecting Mobile Privacy: Your Smartphones, Tablets, Cell Phones and Your Privacy. He was named a 2013 Berkman Center for Internet & Society affiliate at Harvard University.
Ashkan has a masters degree from UC Berkeley’s School of Information and has published three major reports on the extent and methods of online tracking: KnowPrivacy: The Current State of Web Privacy, Data Collection, and Information Sharing, Flash Cookies and Privacy, and Flash Cookies and Privacy II(addendum here). He served as a staff technologist in the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection at the Federal Trade Commission where he helped architect the Do Not Track initiative.