Privacy2.0: Towards collaborative data-privacy protection

Abstract

Data protection is challenging in scenarios where numerous devices collect personal data without drawing attention from the individual concerned, e.g., in Ubiquitous Computing applications, Sensor Networks or Radio Frequency Identification installations. Technicalmechanisms for data protection force the individual to keep track of his personal data and require a thorough understanding of technology. Regulatory approaches cannot keep pace with the advent of new privacy threats. This paper proposes and describes a new multidisciplinary research direction for data protection: The idea is to use Web2.0 mechanisms which let users share their experiences, observations and recommendations regarding the privacy practices of service providers in an intuitive and flexiblemanner.We define an innovative framework at the logical level, i.e., identify the components of the architecture. The core of the framework is a folksonomy of tagged geo-locations, physical items and Internet addresses thatmight have an impact on privacy.Our framework envisioned helps the user to decide if a data collector handles personal information compliant with legal regulations and according to the user preferences. We find out which current technologies can be adapted to implement our framework, and we discuss design alternatives and new research directions. © 2008 International Federation for Information Processing.