Semantic web threatens data privacy

A security expert has warned that the business benefits of the semantic web could be undermined by concerns that it may expose individuals' confidential information to criminals.

The “semantic web” is a term for technologies that will make web pages easier for computer systems to interpret. Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee predicts the semantic web will be valuable for businesses partly because it will provide more accurate search results for consumers. However, the technologies are still some years away from large-scale commercial deployment.

Phillip Hallam-Baker, principal scientist at certification specialist VeriSign, said an unintended consequence of semantic web technology would be to expose individuals' details more easily to criminals searching for ways to crack passwords and commit identity fraud.

"More and more information is being put online, and all the semantic web is doing is making it easier for people to access that data and use it to their advantage," Hallam-Baker argued. "Professional criminals are looking to exploit that information – obscurity can buy you some time but it's running out."

He added that widespread use of the semantic web would probably hasten the end of simple passwords as a means of authentication, to be replaced by stronger, two-factor systems for customers to prove their identity to online merchants and service providers.

But the arrival of the semantic web could also help law enforcers to crack down on internet criminals, by enabling authorities to exchange and aggregate information across jurisdictional boundaries, said Hallam-Baker.

"On balance the value to internet crime fighters [of the semantic web] is greater than the advantage [it gives] to attackers," argued Hallam-Baker. "It won't help crooks as much as it will help us."

Martin Merry, manager of the Semantic Web Research Programme at HP Labs, also denied that the new technology would undermine privacy.

"Data privacy [problems] are far off and the research in place now will stop it becoming an issue. If the will is there to deal with [the problem] will be dealt with," said Merry.

Merry added that the main benefit of semantic web technologies for businesses in the near term would come from internal data integration projects.

"Semantic search has been [pushed] as a good benefit for consumers, but you need a semantic web to do that and a lot of the data out there hasn't bee 'semanticised' yet," said Merry. "This [benefit] is further away than the information integration benefits that corporations will see."