Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Decentralized Information Group are creating a new tool to stymie the “inadvertent misuse” of sensitive data by unauthorized users, ZDNet reports. Dubbed “HTTP with Accountability,” or HTTPA, the tool would automatically scan the transmission of private data, allowing the data owner to analyze how it’s being used. Under the guidance of web founder Tim Berners-Lee, MIT graduate student Oshani Seneviratne and CSAIL Research Scientist Lalana Kagal will share their insights on HTTPA at the IEEE’s Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust this July. “It’s not that difficult to transform an existing website into an HTTPA-aware website,” Seneviratne says. “On every HTTP request, the server should say, ‘OK, here are the usage restrictions for this resource’ and log the transaction in the network of special-purpose servers.”
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