Privacy Issues in Access Control of Web Services: An Appraisal

Privacy is the right of individuals to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent information about them is communicated to others. Due to the rapid growth in popularity of web services, the complexity of their access control policies is also rising, thus, increasing the likelihood of inadvertent privacy disclosures. Anyone involved in e-business transactions would believe that it is axiomatic that privacy is a building block of effective collaborations of web services. Most of the stakeholders are reluctant to use web services as they are not confident about the privacy preservation of their credentials and this attitude is hampering the growth of web based businesses. These web services collect, store, process and share information about lakhs of citizens, who have different notions and preferences related to their Privacy. This promotes a number of ethical, legal and technical issues that must be addressed at a global level to preserve online privacy of e-Citizens. This paper provides an appraisal of privacy related works in web services access control process.