PeCAN: An architecture for users’ privacy-aware electronic commerce contexts on the semantic web

Supporting e-Commerce on the Semantic Web implies more sophisticated integration of Web services, agent interaction, domain ontologies, and data markup languages than is being done on today's Web. We explore user e-commerce, trust, and privacy scenarios and provide a vision for future e-commerce interactions with a more informed and in-control user. We present the Personal Context Agent Networking (PeCAN) knowledge architecture consisting of client-side and web-side architectural data components and services which inform the user of online privacy and trust within e-commerce tasks. A novel organization scheme and the composition of user contexts in this environment are proposed. Client-side ontologies and data structures for representing user contexts are introduced. For proof of concept, we describe a data belief ontology and illustrate PeCAN's compliance to the P3P privacy data schema. We use OWL as an implementation basis for maintaining privacy-aware e-commerce contextual knowledge for effective agent action in the PeCAN environment.Categories and Subject DescriptorsSemantic Web Application Architecture, Web Information Systems Applications, Electronic Privacy, Decision Support System Application