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30 changes: 9 additions & 21 deletions draft-ietf-webbotauth-httpsig-protocol.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -817,29 +817,17 @@ to treat unsigned requests differently nor gives it grounds to.

# Privacy Considerations {#privacy-considerations}

## Public Identity
## Identification and Correlation

This protocol assumes that automated clients identify themselves
explicitly using digital signatures. The identity associated with a signing
key is expected to be publicly discoverable for verification purposes. This
reduces anonymity and allows receivers to associate requests with specific
agents. If an agent wishes not to identify itself, this is not the right
choice of protocol for it.
This protocol enables receivers to recognise requests that carry the same
identifier and to correlate them, including across origins. Key rotation does
not prevent this correlation when the identifier remains unchanged
({{rotation}}). This protocol is unsuitable for agents that need to avoid such
identification.

## No Human Correlation

A key tied to a specific human individual exposes personally identifiable
information and makes the key usable for user tracking or profiling. A key that
represents a role, company, or automation identity (e.g., "news-aggregator-bot",
"example-crawler-v1") avoids this.

## Minimizing Tracking Risks

To limit tracking risks, implementations SHOULD avoid long-lived, globally
unique key identifiers unless strictly necessary. Key rotation SHOULD be
supported, and clients SHOULD take care to avoid signing information that
could be used to correlate activity across contexts, especially where
sensitive user data is involved.
Agents whose identifier would be associated with an individual human, rather
than a service or role, expose that person to the same correlation. This
protocol is not suited to such deployments.

## Directory Content and Access Patterns

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