Encore project aims to boost user privacy

New initiative will research ways to protect personal data on the internet

The Encore project seeks to monitor the use, storage and sharing of data

A new government-backed research project launched today aims to boost privacy and stem the flow of personal information onto the web.

The £3.6m Ensuring Consent and Revocation (Encore) project will involve a team of experts from HP's Systems Security Lab in Bristol, the University of Warwick, QinetiQ, Oxford University's Ethox Centre legal department, and the London School of Economics.

The aim is to provide public and private sector organisations with technologies and methodologies to tightly manage and monitor the use, storage, location and sharing of data, according to Warwick University's Paul Hopkins.

The project will also look at legal and regulatory frameworks around privacy to provide a more holistic view of the issues, he added.

"We're not just going to come up with one technology to solve everything, but technologies and services which will enable users to have more meaningful control over their data," he said. "You might give consent to something but then in the business processes there's no meaningful way to remove that consent."

The project will look at differetn scenarios to establish the problems in various areas, including social networks, e-government, and internally within organisations, said Hopkins.