How Privacy Broadcasting Works

OPN maintains a network of registered Controller profiles of service providers that is used for the automation of notification in order to broadcast the state of the Controller profile for advanced privacy and security notification. The Controller profile is used to generate receipts that can be used independently to compare the current state of the Controller profile with that of a previous state. This automated comparison, enables Controllers to address and personalise the privacy notice regarding the change, and lessens the burden of reading and tracking policy changes for the natural person in context.

An OPN privacy profile is generated when a provider (website or services) registers with OPN by creating a privacy profile pointer (e.g. URL), a privacy contact pointer (e.g. DPO), and a privacy profile statement. Once published, the provider’s privacy profile is activated which enables the automatic monitoring of a policy or notice for changes. OPN hosts the privacy profile,stores all related activity in a privacy profile ledger, and creates a privacy service endpoint using the contact pointer registered in the profile. OPN then continuously monitors the privacy profile and contact information and logs changes to the ledger.

When a change is detected in a profile, either by the automatic tracking performed by OPN or through explicit indication by the provider, a notice specific to that change is broadcast to users and a notice receipt is used to capture that state. This allows maintaining an informed state regarding changes to the privacy for the providers, while users benefit from having a notice comparable with previous states using the receipt. To facilitate the signalling of privacy states, OPN hosts the provider’s profile, policy, and notice in a privacy profile ledger.

Changes to the profile are monitored and logged in the ledger, with a notification to the provider (in case of automatic monitoring) to annotate the change explicitly (authoritatively) by indicating a change in the state of privacy. Users receive (or can generate on demand) a notice receipt for every broadcast they receive. The receipt is then used to check the provider profile for state changes, which once detected, is visualised using an icon (e.g. by changing colour from green to red).

The provider profile displayed to the user, either via the provider’s service or a third-party, contains an OPN profile icon connected to the provider’s privacy profile in the OPN privacy network. The icon is used to visually indicate changes to the state of privacy, users can check for recent changes by clicking or interacting with it. Doing so checks the displayed policy against the latest policy in the ledger and returns a signal indicating any change. User’s can also generate a notice receipt by interacting with the icon, which captures the current state of the privacy profile and can be downloaded by the user. Dragging a notice receipt onto the OPN profile icon allows checking for changes to the state of privacy by comparing the receipt and the ledger. If there are changes, then a notice is displayed describing those changes specific to the user by comparing the latest policy with the policy version in the receipt.

The individual can accept those new changes and can generate a new notice receipt.

Instructions

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