Design Pattern: Permissioned Aggregation of Personal Information

Summary	Setting permissions for personal information aggregation
Status	seed	Confidence	0
details...		Group

Problem

Personal Information, defined as both information by a person and information about a person, is typically dispersed across the Web and needs to be aggregated either for personal use (e.g. centralising an address book) or for public display (e.g. social network aggregators).  This needs to be done in such a way that owners of information about themselves can control what use that information is put to.  Use of this information needs to be sensitive to the context of both the user and the owner.

Context

This pattern is relevant in the context of building content-rich contact lists, social network aggregators, event management tools, travel planning tools and any other application where personal information is a vital component.

Solution

For the person doing the aggregation:

Aggregating multiple RSS feeds (e.g. using a Yahoo pipe);

asking permission to re-use personal information manually;

obtaining 'friend' information thru ad hoc APIs and screen scraping;

sharing contact lists based on vCard;

searching Google for latest contact detail.

For the person about whom information is aggregated:

Complaining about mis-use of personal information, and/or block access to certain users (where systems allow this).

Related Patterns

list other patterns related to this one, under categories such as component, assisting, conflicting, uses this, etc.

Notes, Links and References

Liabilities, potential risks, extensions, expected side-effects

Licensing

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.