The Internet Society aims to improve the global understanding of transborder personal data flows and the related inter-dependent objectives of privacy, security, reliability and user choice.

The Internet Society works at the intersection of technology and policy supporting privacy standards (legal and technical) that are openly developed, transparent, globally-interoperable and user-centric.

Online privacy is:

• The ability to selectively share information within a specific context
• Is about the appropriate handling of information being shared
• Highly influenced by expectations (both explicit and implicit)
• Fundamentally contextual, governed by societal norms, often encoded by jurisdictional laws
• Protected using various tools, such as laws and technology

We Focus On:

We enable a voice for the Internet technical commmunity in policy discussions on revisions, modifications or new privacy frameworks.

Policymakers around the world are considering:

• Whether traditional privacy laws need to be revised for modified for the online environment
• Whether to legislate technical solutions for online privacy
• Whether they should enact Internet-specific legislation

Entities within the Internet technical community are considering:

• How they should deal with privacy in standards developement
• What privacy tools, standards or protocols they should develop to support legal frameworks

We identified a critical need for the Internet Society to provide independent:

• Technically informed advice to policymakers, regulators and others
• Policy/legally informed advice to the Internet technical community.

Find out more

Find out how the Internet Society works on issues of online privacy.