RAPPD: A Language and Prototype for Recipient-Accountable Private Personal Data

Abstract

Often communicate private data in informal settings such as email, where we trust that the recipient shares our assumptions regarding the disposition of this data. Sometimes we informally express our desires in this regard, but there is no formal means in such settings to make our wishes explicit, nor to hold the recipient accountable. Here we describe a system and prototype implementation called Recipient-Accountable Private Personal Data, which lets the originator express his or her privacy desires regarding data transmitted in email, and provides some accountability. Our method only assumes that the recipient is reading the email online, and on an email reader that will execute HTML and JavaScript.