Privacy-Enhanced Web Personalization

Abstract. Consumer studies demonstrate that online users value personalized content. At the same time, providing personalization on websites seems quite profitable for web vendors. This win-win situation is however marred by privacy concerns since personalizing people's interaction entails gathering considerable amounts of data about them. As numerous recent surveys have consistently demonstrated, computer users are very concerned about their privacy on the Internet. Moreover, the collection of personal data is also subject to legal regulations in many countries and states. Both user concerns and privacy regulations impact frequently used personalization methods. This article analyzes the tension between personalization and privacy, and presents approaches to reconcile the both. It has been tacitly acknowledged for many years that personalized interaction and user modeling have significant privacy implications, due to the fact that large amounts of personal information about users needs to be collected to perform personalization. Fo