Legislative Based for Personal Privacy Policy Specification

The growth of the Internet has been accompanied by a proliferation of e-services, especially in the area of e-commerce (e.g., Amazon.com, eBay.com). However, consumers of these e-services are becoming more and more sensitive to the fact that they are giving up private information every time they use them. At the same time, legislative bodies in many jurisdictions have enacted legislation to protect the privacy of individuals when they need to interact with organizations. As a result, e-services can only be successful if there is adequate protection for user privacy. The use of personal privacy policies to express an individual’s privacy preferences appears best-suited to manage privacy for e-commerce. We first motivate the reader with our e-service privacy policy model that explains how personal privacy policies can be used for e-services. We then derive the minimum content of a personal privacy policy by examining some key privacy legislation selected from Canada, the European Union, and the United States.