Kentrell Owens

PhD Candidate (2020 - present)

Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington, USA
[my first name]@cs.washington.edu
Curriculum Vitae

My pronouns are he/him.
Google Scholar
Twitter: @KentrellOwens
Mastodon: @kentrellowens

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About Me

I'm a fifth year PhD candidate at the University of Washington in the Security & Privacy Research Lab. My advisors are Franziska Roesner and Tadayoshi Kohno. My research area is computer security and privacy. My research interests include usable security and privacy, mobile/IoT security and privacy, and web security and privacy. I'm specifically interested in the computer security and privacy needs of underserved communities.

I earned my M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) where I worked with Lorrie Cranor, and my B.S. from Rice University (Houston, TX). I grew up in rural northern Louisiana, and I'm a first-generation college student. I owe the victories in my life to all the investments my friends, family, teachers, and communities have made in me. If you're reading this, you might be one of those people; thank you!

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Updates

12/18/2024 - Last week I did a Research Exchange at ICSI at UC Berkeley hosted by Serge Egelman. I met with researchers there, gave a presentation about my work, and got some valuable feedback on proposed work. It was the most time I've spent in Berkeley, and I had a great time there.

10/9/2024 - I had a great time co-presenting with Elizabeth Vasquez about surveillance of prison communication at Artifical Justice: AI, Tech, and Criminal Defense hosted by the National Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers' Fourth Amendment Center and Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology. I am grateful for the invitation and really enjoyed meeting people and learning from the other presenters.

9/26/2024 - I excited to announce that I was accepted into the 2024 New England Computing & Data Science Rising Stars Program at Boston University; I'm really looking forward to traveling to BU in October!

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Publications

2025

• "You Have to Ignore the Dangers": User Perceptions of the Security and Privacy Benefits of WhatsApp Mods.
  Collins W. Munyendo*, Kentrell Owens*, Faith Strong, Shaoqi Wang, Adam J. Aviv, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Franziska Roesner.
  46th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P). May 2025.
  * co-first authors

2024

• Face the Facts: Using Face Averaging to Visualize Gender-by-Race Bias in Facial Analysis Algorithms.
  Kentrell Owens*, Erin Freiburger*, Ryan Hutchings*, Mattea Sim, Kurt Hugenberg, Franziska Roesner, Tadayoshi Kohno.
  7th AAAI Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES). October 2024.
  BibTeX

2023

• The Surveillance AI Pipeline
  Pratyusha Ria Kalluri*, William Agnew*, Myra Cheng*, Kentrell Owens*, Luca Soldaini*, Abeba Birhane*
  arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.15084. Under review. 2023.
  

2022

• Exploring Deceptive Design Patterns in Voice Interfaces [preprint pdf]
  Kentrell Owens, Johanna Gunawan, David Choffnes, Pardis Emami-Naeini, Tadayoshi Kohno, Franziska Roesner
  European Symposium on Usable Security (EuroUSEC 2022). September 2022.
  BibTeX


• Electronic Monitoring Smartphone Apps: An Analysis of Risks from Technical, Human-Centered, and Legal Perspectives [preprint pdf]
  Kentrell Owens, Anita Alem, Franziska Roesner, Tadayoshi Kohno
  31st USENIX Security Symposium. August 2022.
  BibTeX
  Press: EFF, NewScientist

2021

• User Perceptions of the Usability and Security of Smartphones as FIDO2 Roaming Authenticators [preprint pdf]
  Kentrell Owens, Olabode Anise, Amanda Krauss, Blase Ur
  17th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2021). Online, August 2021.
  BibTeX


• "You Gotta Watch What You Say": Surveillance of Communication with Incarcerated People. [pdf, html]
  Kentrell Owens, Camille Cobb, Lorrie Cranor.
  ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2021). Online, May 8–13, 2021.
  [One pager for ACJ]
  BibTeX
  Honorable Mention Award
  

2020

• A Framework For Evaluating the Usability and Security of Smartphones as FIDO2 Roaming Authenticators
  Kentrell Owens, Blase Ur, Olabode Anise.
  Who Are You?! Adventures in Authentication 2020 Workshop (WAY 2020). Online, August 2020.

2019

• Studying Passwords to Create Domain-Specific Blocklists (Poster). [Extended abstract]
  Kentrell Owens, Mengchen Yong, Neha Sridhar, Ziheng Ni, Joshua Tan, Lorrie Cranor.
  15th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2019). August 2019.


• pico-Boo: How to avoid scaring students away in a CTF competition.
  Kentrell Owens, Alexander Fulton, Luke Jones, Martin Carlisle.
  Journal of The Colloquium for Information System Security Education (CISSE 2019). June 2019.
  Best Student Paper Award