Call for Papers

25th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2025)

July 14–19, 2025

Washington, DC and Online

The annual Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) brings together experts from around the world to present and discuss recent advances and new perspectives on research in privacy technologies. The 25th PETS will be a hybrid event with a physical gathering held in Washington, DC, USA and a concurrent virtual event. Papers undergo a journal-style reviewing process, and accepted papers are published in the journal Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs). Authors of accepted papers are encouraged to attend and present at the physical event, where their presentations can be recorded for the virtual event and where they can participate directly in in-person research, technical, and social activities. However, in-person attendance is not required for publication in the proceedings.

PoPETs, a scholarly, open-access journal for research papers on privacy, provides high-quality reviewing and publication while also supporting the successful PETS community event. PoPETs is self-published and does not have article processing charges or article submission charges.

Authors can submit papers to PoPETs four times a year, every three months, and are notified of the decisions about two months after submission. Authors will receive a decision of accept, revise, or reject; those receiving revise will be invited to revise their article with the guidance of a revision editor according to a well-defined set of revision criteria and will have up to four months to attempt to complete the required revisions. Authors of rejected papers must skip a full issue prior to resubmission.

Submission Guidelines

The submission guidelines contain important submission information for authors. Please note especially the instructions for anonymizing submissions, for ensuring ethical research, and for using AI in writing or editing the manuscript. Papers must be submitted via the PETS 2025 submission server. The submission URL is: https://submit.petsymposium.org/.

Important Dates for PETS 2025

All deadlines are 23:59:59 Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12)

Issue 1
Paper submission deadline: May 31, 2024 (firm)
Rebuttal period: July 16–19, 2024
Author notification: August 1, 2024
Revision deadline: September 1, 2024
Camera-ready deadline for accepted papers and accepted revisions: September 15, 2024

Issue 2
Paper submission deadline: August 31, 2024 (firm)
Rebuttal period: October 15–18, 2024
Author notification: November 1, 2024
Revision deadline: December 1, 2024
Camera-ready deadline for accepted papers and accepted revisions: December 15, 2024

Issue 3
Paper submission deadline: November 30, 2024 (firm)
Rebuttal period: January 14–17, 2025
Author notification: February 1, 2025
Revision deadline: March 1, 2025
Camera-ready deadline for accepted papers and accepted revisions: March 15, 2025

Issue 4
Paper submission deadline: February 28, 2025 (firm)
Rebuttal period: April 15–18, 2025
Author notification: May 1, 2025
Revision deadline: June 1, 2025
Camera-ready deadline for accepted papers and accepted revisions: June 15, 2025

Review Process (New for 2025)

Authors invited to revise their submissions will be provided with a set of revision criteria that must be satisfactorily completed before their paper can be accepted. Authors of such papers will not resubmit to the next issue, but will instead be assigned a revision editor who will guide the revision process by interactively reviewing new versions of the paper and providing feedback and guidance on the changes necessary for acceptance. Authors will be instructed to propose a revision schedule that is agreeable to the revision editor. Authors may complete the necessary changes as soon as is practical but no later than four months following the author notification deadline: revisions that are accepted by the revision editor within 1 month of the author notification will appear in that issue, while revisions that are accepted by the revision editor between 1-4 months of the author notification will appear in the following issue. Not all papers that receive a revise decision will be accepted: papers that do not adequately incorporate the required revisions by the following issue's revision deadline will be rejected. Please see the review process page for more information.

Resubmission of Rejected Papers (New for 2025)

Authors of rejected papers may consider resubmitting to a future issue of PoPETs, but must skip one full issue before resubmission. For example, papers that are rejected from Issue 1 may not be resubmitted until Issue 3 or later. This policy follows into future volumes as well. For example, papers that are rejected from Issue 3 of Volume 2025 may not be resubmitted until Issue 1 of Volume 2026. This policy enables authors ample time to substantially improve their papers and helps mitigate the overburdening of reviewers.

Scope (New for 2025)

Papers submitted to PETS/PoPETs should present novel practical and/or theoretical research into the requirements, design, analysis, experimentation, or fielding of privacy-enhancing technologies and the social, cultural, legal, or situational contexts in which they are used. PETS is also open to interdisciplinary research examining people’s and communities’ privacy needs, preferences, and expectations as long as it is clear how these findings can impact the design, development, or deployment of technology with privacy implications.

Note that a paper's relevance to privacy applications is crucial. PETS is open to topics from the wider area of security and privacy as long as it is clear how these serve to improve or understand privacy in technology (e.g., it includes a use case, evaluation on real data, integration with an application, etc.) in real systems. A paper that makes significant contributions in an area such as theoretical cryptography but fails to clearly tie its contributions to improving or understanding privacy in real systems is unlikely to be accepted. The chairs and the program committee, at their discretion, may reject papers based on scope

Clarification of expectations: This year we introduced a new requirement that submissions must contribute to real privacy applications that run in real systems. Consistent with this focus, we expect that submissions should not need to rely on proofs as a primary contribution and thus proofs would usually appear in the Appendix rather than in the main body, and a substantial portion of each submission would instead be focused on work that is more traditionally considered practical or applied work (e.g., real-world use cases, real-world measurements, evaluation on real-world data, application development, integration with a real-world application, system design and evaluation, etc.). This focus is necessary due to an increasing number of submissions that make primary contributions that are highly theoretical in nature (e.g., to theoretical cryptography and primitives or related areas) for which PoPETs is not well-equipped to review and provide high quality feedback.

Suggested topics include but are not restricted to:

We also solicit Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) papers on any of these topics: papers putting together existing knowledge under some common light (adversary model, requirements, functionality offered, etc.), providing novel insights, identifying research gaps or challenges to commonly held assumptions, etc. Survey papers, without such contributions, are not suitable. SoK submissions should include "SoK:" in their title and check the corresponding option in the submission form.

General Chair (gc25@petsymposium.org)
Adam Aviv, George Washington University
Program Chairs/Co-Editors-in-Chief (pets25-chairs@petsymposium.org)
Rob Jansen, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Zubair Shafiq, University of California, Davis
Vice Program Chairs/Associate Editors-in-Chief
Gunes Acar, Radboud University
Diogo Barradas, University of Waterloo
Devashish Gosain, BITS Pilani
Katharina Kohls, Ruhr University Bochum
Pierre Laperdrix, Inria
Athina Markopoulou, University of California, Irvine
Rishab Nithyanand, University of Iowa
Rebekah Overdorf, University of Lausanne
Tobias Pulls, Karlstad University
Paul Syverson, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Program Committee/Editorial Board:
Ruba Abu-Salma, King's College London
Omer Akgul, Carnegie Mellon University
Eman Alashwali, KAU, KAUST, and CMU
Ghada Almashaqbeh, University of Connecticut
Mário Alvim, UFMG
Héber H. Arcolezi, Inria
Frederik Armknecht, University of Mannheim
Hassan Asghar, Macquarie University
Erman Ayday, Case Western Reserve University
Sangwook Bae, Cape
Zinaida Benenson, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Pascal Berrang, University of Birmingham
Gergely Biczok, CrySyS Lab, Budapest Univ. of Technology and Economics
Nataliia Bielova, Inria
Igor Bilogrevic, Google
Eleanor Birrell, Pomona College
Cecylia Bocovich, The Tor Project
Hannah (Hannaneh) B. Pasandi (Barahouei Pasandi), University of California - Berkeley
Joe Calandrino
Niklas Carlsson, Linköping University
Sofia Celi, Brave
Varun Chandrasekaran, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Panagiotis Chatzigiannis, Visa Research
Yimin (Ian) Chen, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Min Chen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Sherman S. M. Chow, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Francesco Ciclosi, University of Trento
Shaanan Cohney, University of Melbourne
Tianshuo Cong, Tsinghua University
Kovila Coopamootoo, King's College London
Jean-François Couchot, Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comté
Scott Coull, Google
Rob Cunningham, University of Pittsburgh
Ha Dao, MPI-INF
Anupam Das, North Carolina State University
Debajyoti Das, KU Leuven
Edwin Dauber, Widener University
Alex Davidson, NOVA LINCS, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Alexandre Debant, Inria Nancy, France
Martin Degeling, Independent Reseacher
Soteris Demetriou, Imperial College London
Nurullah Demir, Institute for Internet Security
Damien Desfontaines, Tumult Labs
Roger Dingledine, The Tor Project
Ye Dong, Singapore University of Technology and Design
Nir Drucker, IBM Research - Israel
Minxin Du, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Markus Duermuth, Leibniz University Hannover
Christoph Egger, Chalmers University of Technology
Tariq Elahi, University of Edinburgh
Roya Ensafi, CSE, university of Michigan
Saba Eskandarian, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Vero Estrada-Galiñanes, EPFL
Alvaro Feal, Cisco ThousandEyes
Natasha Fernandes, Macquarie University, Australia
Bryan Ford, EPFL
Imane FOUAD, Inria/Univ of Lille
Kevin Gallagher, NOVA LINCS, NOVA School of Science and Technology
Julien Gamba, Cisco ThousandEyes
Alexander Gamero-Garrido, UC Davis
Peng Gao, Virginia Tech
Simson Garfinkel, BasisTech, LLC & Harvard University
Christina Garman, Purdue University
Paolo Gasti, New York Institute of Technology
Sepideh Ghanavati, University of Maine
Zahra Ghodsi, Purdue University
Prosanta Gope, University of Sheffield
Rachel Greenstadt, New York University
Adam Groce, Reed College
Matteo Grosse-Kampmann, Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences and AWARE7 GmbH
Thomas Gross, Newcastle University, United Kingdom
Johanna Gunawan, Maastricht University
Andreas Haeberlen, University of Pennsylvania / Roblox
Syed Mahbub Hafiz, LG Electronics USA, Inc.
Florian Hahn, University of Twente
Lucjan Hanzlik, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
Jamie Hayes, Google Deepmind
Ryan Henry, University of Calgary
Stephen Herwig, William & Mary
Weijia He, University of Southampton
Nguyen Phong Hoang, University of British Columbia
Thang Hoang, Virginia Tech
Sanghyun Hong, Oregon State University
Nick Hopper, University of Minnesota
Murtuza Jadliwala, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Limin Jia, Carnegie Mellon University
Aaron Johnson, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Tushar Jois, City College of New York
Marc Juarez, University of Edinburgh
Nesrine Kaaniche, Institut Polytechnique de Paris
Bailey Kacsmar, University of Alberta
Stefan Katzenbeisser, University of Passau, Germany
Megha Khosla, TU Delft
Nadim Kobeissi, Symbolic Software
Konrad Kollnig, Law & Tech Lab, Maastricht University
Dhruv Kuchhal, Amazon, Inc.
Piyush Kumar, University of Michigan
Jaewoo Lee, University of Georgia
Hieu Le, University of Michigan
Duc Le, Visa Research
Kaitai Liang, TU Delft
Zheng Li, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
Kangjie Lu, University of Minnesota
NING LUO, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Nathan Malkin, New Jersey Institute of Technology
Sunil Manandhar, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Shrirang Mare, Western Washington University
Rahat Masood, University of New South Wales (UNSW)
Fabio Massacci, Univ. of Trento/Vrije Univ. Amsterdam
Travis Mayberry, US Naval Academy
Shagufta Mehnaz, Penn State University
Maryam Mehrnezhad, Royal Holloway University of London, UK
Sebastian Meiser, Universität of Lübeck
David Mestel, Maastricht University
Antonis Michalas, Tampere University
Prateek Mittal, Princeton University
Meisam Mohammady, Iowa State University
Victor Morel, Chalmers University of Technology
Pedro Moreno-Sanchez, IMDEA Software Institute
Johannes Mueller, CNRS/LORIA Nancy
Steven Murdoch, University College London
Adwait Nadkarni, William & Mary
Milad Nasr, Google Deepmind
Joseph Near, University of Vermont
Boel Nelson, Uppsala University; Aarhus University
Nam Ngo, Privacy & Scaling Explorations, Ethereum Foundation
Benjamin Nguyen, INSA Centre Val de Loire
Shirin Nilizadeh, The University of Texas at Arlington
Simon Oya, The University of British Columbia
Catuscia Palamidessi, Inria
Nisha Panwar, Augusta University
Prajwal Panzade, Old Dominion University
Panagiotis Papadopoulos, iProov Limited
Jeongeun Park, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Dario Pasquini, George Mason University
Christopher Patton, Cloudflare
Sai Teja Peddinti, Google
Balazs Pejo, CrySyS Lab, BME
Amogh Pradeep, CrowdStrike
Bart Preneel, KU Leuven
Haotong Qin, ETH Zurich
Lucy Qin, Georgetown University
Ananth Raghunathan, Meta Inc.
Sazzadur Rahaman, University of Arizona
Thilina Ranbaduge, Data61, CSIRO
Joel Reardon, University of Calgary and AppCensus, Inc
Alfredo Rial, Nym Technologies
Vera Rimmer, KU Leuven
Luc Rocher, University of Oxford
Florentin Rochet, UNamur
Andy Rupp, University of Luxembourg and KASTEL SRL
Kavous Salehzadeh Niksirat, EPFL
Sajin Sasy, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security
Theodor Schnitzler, Maastricht University
Dominique Schroeder, TU Wien
Gambs Sébastien, Université du Québec à Montréal
Wendy Seltzer, Tucows
Siamak Shahandashti, University of York, UK
Mahmood Sharif, Tel Aviv University
Supreeth Shastri, University of Iowa
Yan Shvartzshnaider, York University
Sandra Siby, New York University Abu Dhabi
Tjerand Silde, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Lucy Simko, Barnard College
Sachin Kumar Singh, University of Utah
Georgios Smaragdakis, Delft University of Technology
Xiangfu Song, National University of Singapore
Thorsten Strufe, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Wei Sun, Wichita State University
Ruoxi Sun, CSIRO's Data61
Yixin Sun, University of Virginia
Ajith Suresh, Technology Innovation Institute (TII), Abu Dhabi
Nina Taft, Google
Rajat Tandon, Juniper Networks Inc.
Zahra Tarkhani, Microsoft
Jan Tolsdorf, The George Washington University
Carmela Troncoso, EPFL
Hikaru Tsuchida, Saitama Institute of Technology
Anselme Tueno, SAP
Fatih Turkmen, University of Groningen
Tobias Urban, Institute for Internet Security; Westphalian University of Applied Sciences
Christine Utz, Radboud University
Tavish Vaidya, Google
Luke Valenta, Cloudflare, Inc.
Tom Van Goethem, KU Leuven / Google
Eugene Vasserman, Kansas State University
Ryan Wails, Georgetown University & US Naval Research Laboratory
Coby Wang, Visa Research
Di Wang, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
Haoyu Wang, Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Zachary Weinberg, Million Concepts LLC
Christian Weinert, Royal Holloway, University of London
Primal Wijesekera, ICSI & UC Berkeley
Christo Wilson, Northeastern University
Yunming Xiao, University of Michigan
Xusheng Xiao, Arizona State University
Luyi Xing, Indiana University Bloomington
Yixi Xu, Microsoft
Diwen Xue, University of Michigan
Yaxing Yao, Virginia Tech
Arkady Yerukhimovich, George Washington University
Leo Zhang, Griffith University
Shaohu Zhang, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Zhiyi Zhang, Meta
Ziming Zhao, Northeastern University
Yifeng Zheng, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen
Yixin Zou, Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy
Web Chairs (publicity25@petsymposium.org)
Kat Hanna
Mathilde Raynal, EPFL
Sofia Celi, Brave
Social Media Chair (social@petsymposium.org)
Smirity Kaushik, University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign
Publication Chairs (publication25@petsymposium.org)
Pouneh Nikkhah Bahrami, University of California, Davis
Ryan Wails, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory & Georgetown University
HotPETs Chairs (hotpets25@petsymposium.org)
Bailey Kacsmar, University of Alberta
Joel Reardon, University of Calgary
PET Award Chairs (award-chairs25@petsymposium.org)
Awais RashidUniversity of Bristol
Damon McCoyNew York University
Sponsorship Chairs (sponsorship@petsymposium.org)
Steven Murdoch, University College London
Susan McGregor, Columbia University
Infrastructure Chairs
Roger Dingledine, The Tor Project
Ian Goldberg, University of Waterloo
Stipend Chairs (pets2025-stipend@petsymposium.org)
Susan McGregor, Columbia University
Marvin Ramokapane, University of Bristol
Smriti Kaushik, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Christine Utz, Radboud University
Artifact Chairs (artifact25@petsymposium.org)
Maximilian Noppel, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Miti Mazmudar, University of Waterloo

Artifact Review
PoPETs reviews and publishes digital artifacts related to its accepted papers. This process aids in the reproducibility of results and allows others to build on the work described in the paper. Artifact submissions are requested from authors of all accepted papers, and although they are optional, we strongly encourage you to submit your artifacts for review.

Possible artifacts include (but are not limited to):

Artifacts are evaluated by the artifact review committee. The committee evaluates the artifacts to ensure that they provide an acceptable level of utility, and feedback is given to the authors. Issues considered include software bugs, readability of documentation, and appropriate licensing. After your artifact has been approved by the committee, we will accompany the paper link on petsymposium.org with a link to the artifact along with an artifact badge so that interested readers can find and use your artifact.

Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies
You are invited to submit nominations for the 2025 Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies. The Caspar Bowden PET award is presented annually to researchers who have made an outstanding contribution to the theory, design, implementation, or deployment of privacy enhancing technologies. It is awarded at PETS and carries a cash prize as well as a physical award statue. Any paper by any author written in the area of privacy enhancing technologies is eligible for nomination. However, the paper must have appeared in a refereed journal, conference, or workshop with proceedings published in the period from April 1, 2023 until March 30, 2025.

Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Award
A winner of the Andreas Pfitzmann PETS 2025 Best Student Paper Award will be selected at PETS 2025. Papers written solely or primarily by a student who is presenting the work to PETS 2025 are eligible for the award.

Artifact Award
A winner of the PETS 2025 Artifact Award will be announced at PETS 2025. Artifacts for papers accepted to PETS 2025 are eligible for the award.

HotPETs and FOCI
As with the last several years, part of the symposium will be devoted to HotPETs — the "hottest," most exciting research ideas still in a still in a formative state — and FOCI, a workshop showcasing the latest results from the Free and Open Communication on the Internet community. Further information will be published on the PETS website in early 2025.