Accessing and disclosing protected resources: A user-centric view

TODAY, DATA IS MONEY. Whether it is private users’ personal data or confidential data and assets belonging to service providers, all parties have a strong need to protect their resources when interacting with each other, i.e. for access control and authorization. For service providers and enterprises resources are usually well safeguarded, while private users are often missing the tools and the know-how to protect their own data and preserve their privacy. The user’s personal data have become an economic asset, not necessarily to the owners of these data, but to the service providers, whose business mod- els often includes the use of these data.
In this paper we focus on the user – service provider interaction and discuss how recent technological progress, in particular the framework of User Managed Access (UMA), can enable users to understand the value of their protected resources and possibly give them control of how their data will be used by service providers. The paper will also address the typical “take it or leave it” approach of service providers that has become customary in the present information society and leaves little or no choice for the users. We further introduce the concept of bargain, a balanced approach that can satisfy the interests of both service providers and end users. The main goal of this work is to increase the user trust online and enable a better control of the disclosure of personal information.