A recent output from my work at IT Innovation is linked to from this SESERV blog post on the issues of data protection and privacy online. Working with my colleagues Brian Pickering, Callum Beamish and Mike Surridge, I have authored a report on the issue of multiple data owners and ownership of data online. For each topic that we discuss, we provide comments and recommendations for a) users, b) providers and c) service and application developers. The topics, which are a big deal in Future Internet development and Web Science research, are:
- the legal perspective on data protection
- the reality of data protection: what kind of terms and conditions online service providers such as Gooole, Evernote and Twitter provide, and the ways in which companies have stepped outside the law and user expectations
- user trust and attitudes towards privacy
- user confidence when sharing data publicly online
- issues around data mining
