Yael Grauer

I am an investigative tech reporter covering privacy and security, digital freedom, hacking, and mass surveillance. I also have experience in product and program management.

I currently work at Consumer Reports managing Security Planner, a free, easy-to-use guide to staying safer online. I’ve also freelanced for over a decade, with bylines at the Atlantic, Ars Technica, Insider, Slate, The Intercept, OneZero, Popular Science, Vice, Wirecutter, WIRED, and other publications.

I have co-organized events and spoken at conference, on panels, and on podcasts about digital security, memory safety, source protection, ethics, and more.

I’ve completed Hostile Environment and First Aid Training with the International Women’s Media Foundation and the Journalism and Women Symposium, the Source Protection Programme by Freedom of the Press Foundation and Centre for Investigative Journalism, and Ford Foundation’s Cybersecurity Academy.

I hold 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, where I collaborated on projects that won student awards from Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, Investigative Reporters & Editors, Society of Professional Journalists, and Society for Advancing Business Editors and Writers.

I serve as a board member for CyberMed Summit, the world’s only clinically-oriented healthcare cybersecurity conference.

I am a member of Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Internet Press Guild.

I live in Phoenix with my husband and our adorable rescue chiweenie. In my spare time, I enjoy hiking, cooking, baking, playing acoustic guitar (and sometimes ukulele), drinking fancy cocktails, reading academic research, playing puzzle games, lifting heavy things, and going to hacking conferences. I would like to learn how to design soft circuits and e-textiles, and how to perform magic.

Select Speaking Info

  • Fireside Chat: The State of Memory Safety (Enigma)
  • VPNs: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (ShmooCon)
  • PSA: Doorbell Cameras Have Mics, Too (Crypto & Privacy Village)
  • Data Brokers & Consequences for Personal Data (HasGeek)
  • Worst of Cybersecurity Reporting with David Huerta (CactusCon)
  • When Journalism and Security Research Collide (IRE)
  • Tales From The Cybercrypt (Chai Tech)
  • Logical Fallacies (Nerd Nite)
  • I’ve testified in front of the Arizona House of Representatives Committee on Technology on ways to strengthen proposed biometrics legislation and proposed data privacy legislation.
Copyright 2021-2024 Yael Grauer