Yael Grauer

Yael Grauer is the program manager of Security Planner, a free, easy-to-use guide to staying safer online. Her background is in investigative tech reporting, and she has covered privacy and security for over a decade for various tech publications. She has extensively researched the privacy and security (or lack thereof) of consumer VPNs, teamed up with Electronic Frontier Foundation to research street-level surveillance, broken stories on Zoom misleading users about end-to-encryption, looked into questionable claims about blockchain voting, and investigated surveillance against China’s Uyghur minority. Yael serves on the Board of Directors of the CyberMed Summit, the world’s only clinically-oriented healthcare cybersecurity conference. She also runs a do-it-yourself data broker opt-out list, and is currently writing a book on investigations for No Starch Press.

Yael holds an undergraduate degree in Social Sciences from Shimer College and a masters degree in journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. She has co-organized events and spoken on panels and podcasts about digital security, source protection, ethics, and more. She lives in Phoenix with her husband and their adorable rescue chiweenie. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking, cooking, playing folk guitar, drinking fancy cocktails, reading academic research and going to hacking conferences.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

Technology can be incredibly easy to use, but knowing what exactly is happening with our data or the best ways to keep it safe is often a lot more difficult. I strive to get clear, accurate and up-to-date digital security advice to the people who would benefit from it most, shed light on an industry that can be opaque or misleading, make challenging topics accessible while maintaining nuance and complexity, and to push the industry forward to create a safer ecosystem for all.