Title: A business privacy model for virtual communities

Authors: Abdulsalam Yassine, Shervin Shirmohammadi

Addresses: DISCOVER Laboratory, School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa, 800 King Edward Ave., Room 5–077, K1N 6N5, Canada. ' DISCOVER Laboratory, School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa, 800 King Edward Ave., Room 5–077, K1N 6N5, Canada

Abstract: Virtual communities in online networks have created unprecedented opportunities for consumer cooperation, which, naturally, impacts business functions significantly. While virtual communities are now formed for almost every field of life that one could imagine, they still lack a business model by which consumers can make the most of their private data and presumed privacy rights. This paper proposes a business privacy model for virtual communities based on allowing consumers to capitalise on the value of their personal information and get something of value in return. The proposed business model employs a privacy risk quantification mechanism, a game theoretic negotiation protocol and a risk-based premium to determine the consumers| payoff.

Keywords: privacy risks; personal information; virtual communities; web based communities; online communities; business models; private data; security.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2009.023971

International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2009 Vol.5 No.2, pp.313 - 335

Published online: 22 Mar 2009 *

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