Abby Marsh

amarsh1 @ macalester.edu
Associate Professor of Computer Science
Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science
Macalester College

I am an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Macalester College.

I research usable privacy. I am broadly interested in studying how to make online privacy inclusive of marginalized and under-researched populations. I combine theory and empirical work to describe user behavior, and I believe that the privacy and security research community can learn from the existing practices of online groups with complex privacy and security behaviors. My current research focus on online fandom is a result of this.

Navigation

About | Student Resources | Links

Courses

I regularly teach the following courses at Macalester College:

• COMP 127 - Object-Oriented Programming and Abstraction
• COMP 240 - Computer Systems
• COMP 487 - Computer Security and Privacy

During Fall 2023, I taught a First-Year Course using The Little Schemer, which introduced students to programming through recursion and functional programming.

Previous Affiliations

Prior to joining Macalester College, I was a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon, in the Societal Computing Program. I was advised by Lorrie Cranor and unofficially by Julie Downs in the Social and Decision Sciences department. I was also a member of CUPS Lab within CyLab at CMU.

I received an undergraduate degree with a double major in Computer Science and Mathematics at Oberlin College in May of 2013. I was advised by Benjamin Kuperman and Tom Wexler in Computer Science, and Kevin Woods in Mathematics.

Scholarly Work

Abigail Marsh, Lauren Milne. I Don't Want to Sound Rude, but it's None of their Business: Exploring Security and Privacy Concerns Around Assistive Technology Use in Educational Settings. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS), 2024.
[ACM DL]

Abby Marsh, Ada Lerner. Privacy Norms of Transformative Fandom: A Case Study of an Activity-Defined Community. CSCW, 2024.
[PDF] [ACM DL]

Kelly Wang, Dan Bially Levy^*, Kien Nguyen^*, Ada Lerner, Abby Marsh. Counting Carrds: Investigating Personal Disclosure and Boundary Management in Transformative Fandom. CHI, 2024.
[PDF] [ACM DL]

Aron Smith-Donovan^*, Abby Marsh. Demonstrating Covert Channel Vulnerabilities in Precision Time Protocol (PTP). In WSTS, 2023.

Maggie Oates, Yama Ahmadullah, Abigail Marsh, Chelse Swoopes, Shikun Zhang, Rebecca Balebako, and Lorrie Faith Cranor. Turtles, Locks, and Bathrooms: Understanding Mental Models of Privacy Through Illustration. PETS, 2018.
[PDF]

Abigail Marsh, Lorrie Faith Cranor, and Julie S. Downs. Experts' Views on Digital Parenting Strategies. CyLab technical report, CMU-CyLab-17-002, 2017.
[PDF]

Pedro Giovanni Leon, Ashwini Rao, Florian Schaub, Abigail Marsh, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Norman Sadeh. Privacy and Behavioral Advertising: Towards Meeting Users' Preferences. PPS, SOUPS workshop, 2015.
[PDF]

Lorrie Faith Cranor, Adam L. Durity, Abigail Marsh, and Blase Ur. Parents' and Teens' Perspectives on Privacy In a Technology-Filled World. SOUPS 2014.
[PDF]

Rebecca Balebako, Abigail Marsh, Jialiu Lin, Jason Hong, and Lorrie Faith Cranor.The Privacy and Security Behaviors of Smartphone App Developers. USEC, NDSS workshop, 2014.
[PDF]

^* Denotes undergraduate student researcher

Speaking

Presentation at The Carnegie Mellon University - K&L Gates Conference on Ethics and AI, April 2018.

Parents' and Teens' Perspectives on Privacy In a Technology-Filled World. Presented at SOUPS 2014, in Menlo Park, California.
[PDF]