Informed Consent on the Semantic Web

This discussion paper highlights differences between semantic webbased and more traditional web-based applications that raise significant privacy and other ethical issues for users when they provide personal data (about themselves or others) into a semantic web environment. The paper introduces the technologies, highlights some key differences and reviews the concepts behind informed consent. It then argues that a critical challenge for interaction and interface designers of semantic web (and related) applications is to ensure that users are enabled to give their fully informed consent before they provide such data. Finally it explores specific aspects of the challenges and potential approaches to meeting them.