Scenarios of application of the General Law for Personal Data Protection to folksonomies

Abstract

In the universe of Knowledge Organization Systems, tools aimed at representing and organizing information for later retrieval, folksonomies emerge, computational mechanisms that supply and store tags created by Web users themselves to index online resources. Because they are open instruments and aimed at the social sharing of tags and indexed objects, there is a concern with privacy in these environments. In this sense, the present work investigates the existence of folksonomies scenarios in which there is personal information and, therefore, need the support of the General Law for Personal Data Protection. Furthermore, if there are such possibilities, an attempt is made to describe the main rules of the law that must be applied to tagging environments on the Web. To carry out this research, the deductive method of approach, the comparative procedural methodology and the bibliographical research technique were used. It is concluded that there are possible cases of the presence of personal data in folksonomies, either when this type of information is in the form of tags, or in its inclusion in indexed resources (text, graphics, audiovisual, etc.). In addition, it was concluded that not all the rules of the General Law for Personal Data Protection are applicable to these systems, but that the law must be observed as much as possible, to resolve the risk of violations, and illegitimate exposure of personal information is the main one.