Multiple data owners: who’s doing what with your data?

Abstract

The Future Internet offers increasing opportunities for participation by private individuals, natural persons in legal terms. Personal access devices have not been confined to office-based personal computers for some time, and continue to evolve: computer systems grew smaller and more compact with a demand for increased portability, and personal communication devices (mobile phones) grew in storage and processing capacity as well as going beyond telecommunications to the web (smart phones) for the two to converge in tablet-type devices. On the one hand, this allows for extensive and pervasive connectivity all day, every day, for access to data and information systems, to communicate with friends, with colleagues and with businesses and government, as well as to share with the world or worlds what us going for the individual or in an individual’s reaction to events or to others: the social network. On the other, this poses increasing challenges for personal privacy as well as freedom. Personal data associated with individuals should be treated with care, it can be assumed; but what happens when the data subjects themselves release such data via social networking sites (SNS)?

In this report, relevant legislation surrounding the treatment of personal data is presented and reviewed. Interactions of individuals (data subjects) with online services is described against the legislative background and summary conclusions and recommendations are made directed at FI Users, FI Providers and Service and application developers. The report is divided into the following sections:

Background: the legal perspective on protecting personal data
outlines the legal framework in Europe for the protection of personal data, summarising the various sections of the Data Protection Directive for how such data should be handled.

The reality: should we be nervous?
discusses how legislation is implemented and lists areas such as unauthorised disclosure and sharing in terms of particular cases against well-known service providers.

User perceptions: trust
briefly reviews user attitudes to online services and how their personal data are protected. User confidence: the public domain outlines the legal basis for treating data which have beenmade public (such as varying sharing on public websites); and finally

User profiles and data mining: derivative works
looks how personal data shared via social networking sites along with records of online activity and behaviours can be used to build up profiles of end users which could well provide an unwanted perspective on a given individual.

So the intention in this overview is to bring together legislative, subjective and service-oriented aspects of personal data usage as it stands today with some indicators of the challenges for those building as well as using the Future Internet.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Brian Pickering: orcid.org/0000-0002-6815-2938

ORCID for Mike Surridge: orcid.org/0000-0003-1485-7024

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