Click Here to Consent Forever: Expiry Dates for Informed Consent

Big Data & Society, Volume 3, Issue 1, pp 1-6, January-June 2016

6 Pages Posted: 4 Oct 2017

See all articles by Bart Custers

Bart Custers

Leiden University - Center for Law and Digital Technologies

Date Written: January 10, 2016

Abstract

The legal basis for processing personal data and some other types of Big Data is often the informed consent of the data subject involved. Many data controllers, such as social network sites, offer terms and conditions, privacy policies or similar documents to which a user can consent when registering as a user. There are many issues with such informed consent: people get too many consent requests to read everything, policy documents are often very long and difficult to understand and users feel they do not have a real choice anyway. Furthermore, in the context of Big Data refusing consent may not prevent predicting missing data. Finally, consent is usually asked for when registering, but rarely is consent renewed. As a result, consenting once often implies consent forever. At the same time, given the rapid changes in Big Data and data analysis, consent may easily get outdated (when earlier consent no longer reflects a user’s preferences). This paper suggests expiry dates for consent, not to settle questions, but to put them on the table as a start for further discussion on this topic. Although such expiry dates may not solve all the issues of informed consent, they may be a useful tool in some situations.

Keywords: Informed Consent, Big Data, Expiry Dates, Privacy, Personal Data

Suggested Citation

Custers, Bart, Click Here to Consent Forever: Expiry Dates for Informed Consent (January 10, 2016). Big Data & Society, Volume 3, Issue 1, pp 1-6, January-June 2016, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3047128 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3047128

Bart Custers (Contact Author)

Leiden University - Center for Law and Digital Technologies ( email )

2300 RA Leiden, NL-2300RA
Netherlands

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