Re: privacy definitions -- was: WebID questions

On 17 Oct 2012, at 08:17, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote:

> 
> On Oct 16, 2012, at 20:40 , Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> But that is not yet transparency I am looking for. Because you could go to a site and click mistakenly on "accept cookies forever", and you could easily forget about it later. What is
>> needed I was arguing is the ability to be able to see in your URL bar that you are using cookies
>> and be able to switch it off easily. Then you would be made aware constantly of your identity at 
>> a site. 
> 
> The problem is that many, if not most, sites use cookies, and a warning that is almost always on gets ignored.

It does not have to be a warning. It can be a special part of the UI dedicated to identity
I imagine it very much like what Aza Raskin shows

   http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/identity-in-the-browser-firefox/

That is the same part of the UI would show you if you are anonymous, have a site based pseudonymous tracking system, are logged in with a global ID ( such as WebID ), ...

Btw, one could have a cookie mechanism based on a local WebID, which could be used by the 
browser to retrieve personal information for a site for the user. Then instead of showing a 
cookie, the browser can also show the information about the user on that site. I think this is close to what Aza Raskin was proposing.

Again the same ui space can show you when you are

  1. Anonymous ( some nice icon for that )
  2. traditional cookie
  3. local UI - profile picture or something, with pointer to your home page
  4. Global ID  such as WebID - profile picture, link to your home page, ...

And it could allow you to disconnect from any of those identifiers. If the quality of your connection breaks then people will of course get to understand the undoubted benefits of cookies.


> 
> 
> David Singer
> Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.
> 

Social Web Architect
http://bblfish.net/