Aleecia McDonald

Assistant Professor of the Practice, Institute for Software Research
Courtesy Professor, Engineering and Public Policy

Bio

Aleecia M. McDonald is an assistant professor of the practice. She focuses on the public policy issues of internet privacy, including user expectations for privacy tools, behavioral economics and mental models of privacy, and the efficacy of industry self regulation. She co-chaired the WC3’s Tracking Protection Working Group, which was an effort to establish international standards for a Do Not Track mechanism that users can enable to request enhanced privacy online.

McDonald’s decade of experience working in software startups adds a practical focus to her academic work, and she was a senior privacy researcher for Mozilla prior to working as director of Privacy at Stanford. Her findings have been featured in media outlets such as the Washington Post, Ars Technica, and NPR. She has presented findings in testimony to the California Assembly, and contributed to testimony before the United States Senate and the Federal Trade Commission.