Big Data, Privacy, and Trusted Web: What Needs to Be Done

Abstract

Whenever a huge amount of personal information is available, individuals, private businesses or public institutions may try to infer individuals behaviors, preferences and attitudes and to classify them according to certain profiles. This tendency is as strong as dangerous, since there is no such thing as an accurate classification. Moreover, in the presence of information asymmetries, which are extremely common in everyday life (such as market exchange, buyer/seller interactions, insurance contracts, bank operations, job interviews, etc.), an inappropriate or wrong classification may be hard to correct or oppose to. Moreover, it may affect the lives of people in manifold and unexpected ways, given the high degree of interconnectedness of different services. In