MIT CSAIL

Social Web Privacy

Overview

Social networks, blogs, photo sharing sites and other applications known collectively as the Social Web are collecting and exposing an increasingly complex and far-reaching set of information describing the social relationships of millions of individuals on the Web. Privacy risks include not only exposure of one's own personal information, but also anyone else who is represented as a node in the data subjects FOAF graph. Not only does this social network expose the personal information of its individual members, but also the professional and personal relationships among all of these people.

This is a proposal to re-establish privacy boundaries in social networking environment. RespectMyPrivacy (RMP) defines a minimum set of restrictions on usage of personal information as well as on the public assertions that may or may not be made based on inferences from social network data. Accountability to these rules will be achieved through social consensus along with a technical assistance from tools that help participants in the social network. The policy vocabulary defined here is designed to help participants in social networks signal to each other about their own personal privacy boundaries and will

  • help users to declare their privacy boundaries
  • help those who use this personal information in social networks to be aware of these boundaries, and
  • provide a light weight layer of accountability to encourage Web users to respect each others stated privacy boundaries

Current Status

References


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