Me want cookie! Towards automated and transparent data governance on the Web

TL;DR

This paper envisions semi-automated, policy-driven data governance for the Web, focusing on cookies, by integrating policy languages with browsers to enhance user control and transparency.

Contribution

It introduces a sociotechnical framework for automated cookie management using policy languages and assesses their expressiveness for Web data governance.

Findings

Policy languages can describe cookie policies effectively.

Browsers can act on policies to control data sharing.

This approach supports future Web-scale data governance.

Abstract

This paper presents a sociotechnical vision for managing personal data, including cookies, within Web browsers. We first present our vision for a future of semi-automated data governance on the Web, using policy languages to describe data terms of use, and having browsers act on behalf of users to enact policy-based controls. Then, we present an overview of the technical research required to {prove} that existing policy languages express a sufficient range of concepts for describing cookie policies on the Web today. We view this work as a stepping stone towards a future of semi-automated data governance at Web-scale, which in the long term will also be used by next-generation Web technologies such as Web agents and Solid.