Patent ID: 7207067

Claim:
A method for enforcing multiple countries' or/and entities' data protection rules in a Web service, said Web service maintaining a dynamic list of countries or/and entities that have been recognized for adequate data protection and maintaining a set of identification parameters for each registered data recipients, said method comprising the steps of: formalizing data protection rules for each country or entity into specifications, each of said specifications being treated as a configuration file; enforcing a first set of data protection rules while collecting personal data from users; wherein said step of enforcing a first set of data protection rules further comprises the steps of: creating a document object model (DOM) tree from a given XML form template; identifying a total list of nodes in said DOM tree that contain a tag for data collection: identifying a list of policy statements in a formal specification of a data protection rule: constructing a sub-list of said total list of nodes that should be removed from said DOM tree according to said list of policy statements; removing all DOM trees with root node included in said sub-list; and exporting the remaining DOM tree into text format; enforcing a second set of data protection rules while transferring personal data; and enforcing a third set of data protection rules while processing personal data collected from users.