The European Union is to spend £7.8m on a three-year
project to enhance users' privacy in social networks, virtual
communities and other Web 2.0 technologies.
IBM's Zurich Research
Laboratory will lead 14 other partners in
PrimeLife
- Privacy and Identity Management in Europe for Life.
PrimeLife's short-term goal is to provide scalable and
configurable privacy and identity management in new and emerging
internet services and applications. In the longer term, it aims to
develop tools that will protect individuals' privacy throughout
their life.
Jan Camenisch, PrimeLife's technical leader, said everyone who
used the internet left "virtual footprints" that others could
collect and use without their knowledge. This was made possible by
advances in technologies for data collection, unlimited storage,
and reuse and lifelong linkage of these digital traces, he
said.
This could lead to such data being used without the person's
permission, he said. Camenisch referred to incidents of employers
and universities looking up applicants' online community profiles
before interviewing them for jobs or disciplinary reasons. In some
countries, social networks had used details of customers' online
shopping habits or personal preferences without their permission,
he said.
"We aim to develop a toolbox, which you could describe as an
integrated electronic data manager," said Camenisch. This would
give users an overview of which personal data they used when,
where, and how. It would let them define default privacy settings
and preferences for all kinds of applications, and it would prompt
the user if applications asked for data for any other purpose.
PrimeLife would "substantially advance" human-computer
interfaces, configurable policy languages, web service federations,
infrastructures and privacy-enhancing cryptography, said
Camenisch.
Other PrimeLife partners include the World Wide Web Consortium's
PLING, Liberty Alliance, ISO/IEC JTC 1, and ITU. PrimeLife will
also work with open-source communities such as Higgins. Industry
partners include Microsoft, Giesecke & Devrient and SAP.