David Freeman

Anti-abuse research scientist/engineer at Meta

Mountain View, California, United States

About

I am a data scientist/engineer/researcher with a background in cryptography and a passion for building teams that use math and statistics to keep the Internet safe. I enjoy working on problems at the confluence of security, privacy, and integrity (aka anti-abuse), and at various points have tackled fake & compromised accounts, impersonation, spam, fraud, fake engagement, bot detection, scraping, and measurement of all of the above. Specialties: Data science, cryptography, security, algorithms, probability/statistics, data mining, machine learning, software engineering.

Experience

  • Research Scientist/Engineer at Meta
    Aug 2017 - Present · 8 yrs 11 mos

    • Engineer and tech lead on teams addressing problems such as spam, fake engagement, user data scraping, and verification. • Directed publication efforts for 7 research papers in security & privacy.

  • LinkedIn (Mountain View, CA)
    • Senior Manager, Software Engineering
      Aug 2015 - Aug 2017 · 2 yrs 1 mo

      • Responsible for efforts to combat fraud and abuse on the LinkedIn platform. • Worked with larger machine learning community at LinkedIn to build scalable modeling and scoring infrastructure. • Worked with partners in product, analytics, and operations to measure and prioritize anti-abuse efforts. • Author, presenter, and organizer at international conferences on machine learning and security (NDSS, WWW, AISec).

    • Manager, Security Data Science
      Feb 2014 - Aug 2015 · 1 yr 7 mos

      • Led team of data scientists charged with detecting and preventing fraud and abuse across the LinkedIn ecosystem. • Worked with partners in product and engineering to build security models into LinkedIn products and ensure accurate tracking and reporting. • Revamped and standardized team's hiring process.

    • Senior Security Data Scientist
      Jul 2012 - Jan 2014 · 1 yr 7 mos

      • Owned domain of finding fraudulent LinkedIn accounts, including setting priorities and measuring success. • Designed algorithms to detect fake accounts and to prevent fraud, spam, and abuse on the site in general. • Trained and implemented classifiers using Logistic Regression, Decision Trees, Support Vector Machines, and Naive Bayes. • Developed models from prototype through to production using Python, R, Pig, Hive, and SQL.

  • Data Science Fellow at Insight Data Science
    Jun 2012 - Jul 2012 · 2 mos

    • Investigated causes of airline delays using DOT database of >120 million flights. • Analyzed data and built models using Python, R, mySQL, and Hadoop.

  • Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University
    Jun 2008 - Jul 2012 · 4 yrs 2 mos

    • Designed algorithms to improve security of a variety of cryptographic protocols, including cloud computing, network routing, and searching on encrypted data. • Created specialized cryptographic mechanisms resistant to attacks by a quantum computer. • Developed and taught masters-level course on elliptic curve cryptography, with exercises using Python and Sage. • Published 7 original research papers.

  • Postdoctoral Fellow at CWI Amsterdam
    Dec 2008 - Dec 2009 · 1 yr 1 mo

    • Created general framework to improve efficiency of certain cryptographic protocols. • Designed algorithms to generate parameters for efficient cryptosystems. • Ran simulations in Pari and Magma. • Published 5 original research papers.