WG: Proposed profiling standard aims to protect privacy on Internet

[Wolfgang Bartsch <WBARTSCH@CSI.compuserve.com>]

Wau et.al.,

find attached more infos on the "profiles".

Gr"u"se,

Wolfgang Bartsch
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
CompuServe Product Development 	http://www.compuserve.de
Tel.: +49-89-6657-1217		http://go.compuserve.de
Fax: +49-89-6657-1250		http://home.pages.de/~woba/



Proposed profiling standard aims to protect privacy on Internet 

InfoWorld Electric

Posted at 8:16 AM PT, May 27, 1997 


Netscape and other vendors will propose an Internet profiling standard this
week, one aimed at letting users control how much personal information a Web
site can collect.
Netscape, Firefly Network, and VeriSign will bring the Open Profiling Standard
to the World Wide Web Consortium by the end of this week, seeking to submit it
as a proposed standard, company officials said.
The proposed standard is pitched as a way to protect a user's privacy, since it
will let users decide whether to supply personal information that is requested
from a Web site or to deny the request, officials said.
Users would be able to enter personal information -- including name, address,
phone number, and e-mail address -- that is commonly requested during Web site
registration into a Personal Profile file. That file would be on users' hard
drives; users would be able to decide which Web sites get to see what
information and whether a Web site can share the information with other sites,
officials said.
More than 60 companies signed on to support the proposed standard Tuesday,
including advertising and auditing firms, large consumer Web sites, and
companies that offer search engines, hardware, and software. The Electronic
Frontier Foundation, a privacy group, has also signed on to support the proposed
standard.
The standard is based in the vCard electronic business card specification,
officials said. It also calls for using digital certificates to authenticate the
identity of the user, officials said.
Netscape Communications Corp., in Mountain View, Calif., can be reached at
http://www.netscape.com/. VeriSign Inc., also in Mountain View, can be reached
at http://www.verisign.com/. Firefly Network Inc., in Cambridge, Mass., can be
reached at http://www.firefly.com/.