[rdfweb-dev] Access control of foaf information

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 02:55:37PM +0800, Spark wrote:
> Hi, can i describe in my foaf file explicitly that some part of my foaf information can be viewed or aggregated by someone and others cannot? i don't know whether it is a good idea to put the access control policy or privacy assertion into the foaf file. can someone give me a suggestion? thanks a lot!

I think the best way to do this is probably to use PGP encryption and
community keys for information that you don't want to share outisde a
certain group of people. This is how FOAFbot worked:

(from http://usefulinc.com/foaf/encryptingFoafFiles)

I have a FOAF file, with my public data. I also have an encrypted FOAF
file with my private data. In my public file I add something along the
lines of:

<rdfs:seeAlso>
     <foaf:Document 
         rdf:about="http://heddley.com/edd/foaf-private.rdf.asc">
       <!-- encrypted for the #foaf community -->
       <wot:encryptedTo>
         <wot:PubKey wot:hex_id="6C7F734E" />
       </wot:encryptedTo>
     </foaf:Document>
 </rdfs:seeAlso>

Then, communities which hold the correct key can read and decrypt the
file.

However, no tools at the current time are currently supporting this
method (as FOAFbot is currently offline), as far as I am aware. I may
build support for this into new versions of my own community IRC bot,
but that's just a vague promise.

Does this help to answer your question?

-- 
Christopher Schmidt
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