ADAPT researcher awarded NGI Trust funding for solution to manage Consent for Personal Data

11 January 2021
ADAPT researcher awarded NGI Trust funding for solution to manage Consent for Personal Data

Dublin, 19 October 2020: As we browse websites and use various online services, do we really know and can prove what we’re signing up for when we accept any notice? ADAPT Researcher Dr Harshvardhan J. Pandit has secured €150,000 in funding from the Next Generation of Internet (NGI) TRUST initiative to develop a solution called “Privacy-as-Expected: Consent Gateway” (PaE) for recording consent and accepted terms towards a privacy-conscious and accountable experience on the web. The project involves Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), Birmingham City University (UK), and Open Consent Group (UK) as partners and is funded for 9 months from October 2020.

Through PaE, whenever a user accepts a privacy notice, they will receive a cryptographic Consent Receipt which will act as proof of their consent – or lack thereof. While creating an infrastructure to manage transparent, usable and accountable consent, the user will further have access to crowd-reviewed Privacy Notices. A further key deliverable of this project is to design a Consent Gateway service which, while not keeping any personal information, will review, for the user, and notify any changes requiring re-acceptance.

Dr Harshvardhan Pandit says, “The Privacy as Expected project will improve the online experience for both organisations and individuals by providing transparency and accountability regarding consent.”

NGI TRUST is funded under the larger NGI initiative that seeks to build up a human-centric online environment by promoting online privacy and trust through the development of an ecosystem of European digital researchers and innovators.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the NGI_TRUST grant agreement no 825618.

Share this article: