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The average age of the world population is growing rapidly, while the fastest growing segment of the population is adults over the age of 65. Compounded by this growth is an increase in longevity, escalating instances of age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia. Supporting the ability for the elderly or people with disabilities to live at home longer is of both personal and economic benefit to the individual. We expect that emerging technologies can facilitate this process. Our goal is to build a home, rich in technology, to help people age in place.

This research describes a framework and methodology for managing the privacy policy of an enterprise, including creation (based on factors like privacy legislation and consumer preferences), validation and verification, deployment and enforcement, and compliance testing for business processes and software. To validate the framework, one module (compliance testing) is implemented for an existing prominent electronic commerce software application. Our unique approach monitors the personal information sent and received by the software application and converts it to a standardized representation. At defined points in the electronic commerce work flow, the transmissions are compared to a set of privacy rules to ascertain compliance. Non-compliant transmissions of personal information are labeled privacy infractions and are addressed by stopping the work flow or by generating a report and alerting the administrator.