To read this content please select one of the options below:

Towards secure sealing of privacy policies

Kostas Moulinos (Hellenic Data Protection Authority, Athens, Greece)
John Iliadis (Department of Information and Communication Systems Engineering, University of the Aegean Research Unit, Athens, Greece)
Vassilis Tsoumas (Department of Informatics, Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, Greece)

Information Management & Computer Security

ISSN: 0968-5227

Article publication date: 1 September 2004

1371

Abstract

In order to provide customers with a sense of security regarding the protection of their personal data, companies sign on to a “seal” programme, where rules designed by the seal issuer in accordance to underlying laws must be adhered to. A user can verify online that a specific organisation adheres to a published privacy policy. This paper argues that the verifications means these programmes use are vulnerable to DNS spoofing attacks and present a privacy policy verification (“seal”) scheme, which is not vulnerable to attack. It is also argued that there are disadvantages in operating seal schemes that attempt to publicly certify compliance levels with a self‐regulatory privacy protection model. On the contrary, these disadvantages are softened when used in a regulatory model that has adopted comprehensive laws to ensure privacy protection.

Keywords

Citation

Moulinos, K., Iliadis, J. and Tsoumas, V. (2004), "Towards secure sealing of privacy policies", Information Management & Computer Security, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 350-361. https://doi.org/10.1108/09685220410553569

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2004, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Related articles