A couple of days ago, in Web Privacy Is Obsolete! So Now What?, I proposed a framework for the simplification and optimization of Web user privacy preferences on Web sites -- a "Privacy Themes" structure (or more formally, "User Privacy Preference Themes" - UPPTs).

The concept of Privacy Themes is basically to create user-oriented "higher order" groupings and intelligent preference linkage "rules" for the myriad and complex privacy-related settings that increasingly are part and parcel of Web site use today.

The goal of this structure is to minimize users' misunderstanding of privacy preference settings, maximize users' satisfaction with privacy-related defaults and settings choices, and generally to broadly improve the user experience with Web sites within these contexts.

In all honestly, I brought up Policy Themes in that posting with a bit of trepidation. I've been working on details related to this concept for quite some time, and as I noted in the posting, my many detailed notes on this are not yet in shape for publication, nor am I in a position right now to spend the kind of time needed to bring them up to a suitable standard that I'd consider to be appropriate for publication.

I mention this because I was surprised by the high level of interest regarding my Saturday posting, and the large number of people asking for details regarding Privacy Themes, wanting to join a discussion mailing list (which does not at this time exist) and so on.

To everyone who wrote me about Privacy Themes, please consider this to be my apology for not responding to you all individually. My hope is that this approach may be of some use to the Internet community, and I'd like to "get it out there" as soon as possible in a useful form.

But given the current situation, I simply cannot deal with this appropriately right now in terms of posting all of the materials, or getting into the kinds of detailed technical and policy discussions related to this that I'd really love to do if other issues didn't have priority at the moment in my life.

I will attempt to individually answer specific questions related to Privacy Themes as circumstances permit. I would like to publicly post additional related materials and start an associated discussion mailing list, but these will have to wait for a while at least, given the status quo, anyway.

Thank you so much for your interest in this proposal. Take care, all.

--Lauren--