Taking the byte out of cookies: privacy, consent, and the Web

• Authors: Daniel Lin;Michael C. Loui
• Venue: Proceedings of the ethics and social impact component on Shaping policy in the information age
• Year: 1998

We consider the privacy of personal information on the World Wide Web, emphasizing a concept of privacy as an aspect of social relationships between individuals. We make three contributions to understanding the right to privacy on the Web: (1) we highlight the role of informed consent as an important consideration for privacy, (2) we identify conditions under which the collection and centralization of personal information can be ethically justified, and (3) we offer an interpretation of a "reasonable expectation of privacy" for Internet cookies, a mechanism used by Web sites to remember information about visits to that site.The views, opinions, and conclusions of this paper are not necessarily those of the University of Illinois. Preliminary versions of this paper were presented at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, Dallas, TX, February 26[28, 1998, and the ACM Policy 98 Conference, Washington D.C., May 10-12, 1998.Address for correspondence: Michael C. Loui, Graduate College, 801 S. Wright Street, Champaign, IL 61820-6210, e-mail: [e-mail], telephone: [phone], fax: [phone].