ConPro ’25 will be co-located with the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy and will take place on May 15, 2025.
| Submissions Due | January 15, 2025 (11:59:59PM ET) |
| Notification to Authors | February 12, 2025 |
| Final Proposals Due | March 5, 2025 |
The complete list of PC members is available here.
Advances in technology come with countless benefits for society, but these advances sometimes introduce new risks as well. Various characteristics of technology, including its increasing complexity, may present novel challenges in understanding its impact and addressing its risks. Enforcement agencies have broad jurisdiction to protect consumers against certain harmful practices (typically called "deceptive and unfair" practices in the United States), but sophisticated technical analysis may be necessary to assess practices, risks, and more. Moreover, consumer protection covers an incredibly broad range of issues, from substantiation of claims that a smartphone app provides advertised health benefits to the adequacy of practices for securing sensitive customer data.
The Ninth Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection (ConPro ’25) will explore computer science topics with an impact on consumers. This workshop has a strong security and privacy emphasis, with an overall focus on ways in which computer science can prevent, detect, or address the potential for technology to play a role in consumer deception or harm. Participants will consist heavily of academic and industry researchers but are also expected to include researchers with experience at government agencies that have a consumer protection mission. Research advances and ideas presented at the workshop may help improve the lives of consumers, and discussions at the event may help researchers understand how their work can best promote consumer welfare given laws and norms surrounding consumer protection.
Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
While this list is not exhaustive, note that this is a computer science research workshop. Closely related or interdisciplinary work is welcomed, but work lacking a clear computer science component or failing to constitute a research project may be rejected without review. Note also that ethical concerns may be grounds for rejection.
This year, ConPro will accept only short proposals describing research ideas. A submitted research proposal should consist of a title, abstract, and brief motivation for and description of the idea. Proposals can describe a project in various stages, from a novel idea or challenge to a provocation for the ConPro community to a promising completed pilot study. Examples include (we emphasize that these are suggestions, not prescribed categories):
These proposals offer their authors an opportunity to discuss and refine their ideas with the ConPro audience, solicit suggestions for overcoming research challenges, build a collaboration around a new idea or initiative, or even form a group to develop a proposal.
PC members will evaluate proposals based on the impact, novelty, and feasibility of the idea. Proposals need not include proof-of-concept or preliminary results. Proposals that would benefit from, or even require, interdisciplinary collaboration are encouraged.
One author of each accepted research proposal is expected to present the work at the workshop. The format is expected to include traditional conference-style presentations followed by roundtable discussion and feedback. Interactive and engaging presentations are welcomed. Following notification to authors, more information will be provided regarding speaking times and other details.
Research proposals are intended for PC review, and the workshop will have no official proceedings. Only titles, abstracts, and funding sources for these talks will be posted on the workshop web site, and we will request that the authors provide these in both text and PDF format. Authors are free to submit work appearing in ConPro ’25 to other venues for presentation following the workshop, subject to those venues' restrictions.
For consistency, many aspects of these instructions are drawn from the co-located IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy guidelines.
To be considered, submissions must be received by the January 15, 2025 deadline. Extensions will not be granted. Submissions must be original work and may not be under submission to another venue at the time of review (but as mentioned above, work may be submitted to other venues for presentation following the workshop).
Submitted research proposals must be no longer than two pages, including all figures. References and appendices will not count towards this limit, but reviewers are not required to read appendices.
Submissions must be formatted for US letter (not A4) size paper. The text must be formatted in a two-column layout, with columns no more than 9.5 in. tall and 3.5 in. wide. The text must be in Times font, 10-point or larger, with 11-point or larger line spacing. Authors are strongly encouraged to use the IEEE conference proceedings templates. LaTeX submissions should use IEEEtran.cls version 1.8b with options "conference,compsoc" (begin your LaTeX document with the line \documentclass[conference,compsoc]{IEEEtran}). Submissions may be automatically checked for conformance to these requirements. Failure to adhere to the page limit and formatting requirements are grounds for rejection without review.
Submissions must be in Portable Document Format (.pdf). Authors should pay special attention to unusual fonts, images, and figures that might create problems for reviewers. Text and figures should be comprehensible when printed in black and white.
Submissions must be provided via https://hotcrp.conpro25.ieee-security.org/ and may be updated at any time until the submission deadline. During the submission process, you will be asked to supply information regarding potential conflicts of interest of the submission's authors with program committee members. Submissions should not indicate authors' names or affiliations (but may reference past work without indicating common authorship).
Authors are responsible for obtaining appropriate publication clearances. Final versions of work should include sources of funding, which authors will be required to provide with their final title and abstract. One of the authors of the accepted submission is expected to present the work at the conference.
For any questions, contact the workshop co-chairs at: conpro25@ieee-security.org.