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Privacy Languages: Are we there yet to enable user controls?

Published: 11 April 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Privacy protection is one of the most prominent concerns for web users. Despite numerous efforts, users remain powerless in controlling how their personal information should be used and by whom, and find limited options to actually opt-out of dominating service providers, who often process users information with limited transparency or respect for their privacy preferences. Privacy languages are designed to express the privacy-related preferences of users and the practices of organisations, in order to establish a privacy-preserved data handling protocol. However, in practice there has been limited adoption of these languages, by either users or data controllers. This survey paper attempts to understand the strengths and limitations of existing policy languages, focusing on their capacity of enabling users to express their privacy preferences. Our preliminary results show a lack of focus on normal web users, in both language design and their tooling design. This systematic survey lays the ground work for future privacy protection designs that aim to be centred around web users for empowering their control of data privacy.

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cover image ACM Other conferences
WWW '16 Companion: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web
April 2016
1094 pages
ISBN:9781450341448

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  • IW3C2: International World Wide Web Conference Committee

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International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee

Republic and Canton of Geneva, Switzerland

Publication History

Published: 11 April 2016

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Author Tags

  1. data terms of use
  2. privacy languages
  3. user control

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  • EPSRC

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WWW '16
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  • IW3C2
WWW '16: 25th International World Wide Web Conference
April 11 - 15, 2016
Québec, Montréal, Canada

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WWW '16 Companion Paper Acceptance Rate 115 of 727 submissions, 16%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 1,899 of 8,196 submissions, 23%

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  • (2021)Privacy Preference Signals: Past, Present and FutureProceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies10.2478/popets-2021-00692021:4(249-269)Online publication date: 23-Jul-2021
  • (2021)E-Government und Datensouveränität – Einblicke und LösungsansätzeE-Government and Data Sovereignty – Insights and SolutionsHMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik10.1365/s40702-021-00766-458:5(1081-1091)Online publication date: 19-Aug-2021
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  • (2020)Utility Requirement Description for Utility-Preserving and Privacy-Respecting Data PseudonymizationTrust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business10.1007/978-3-030-58986-8_12(171-185)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2020
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