Consent-driven privacy disclosure control processing

1. A method, comprising:

receiving a token from a requesting service for access to a portion of a private/sensitive information;

providing the requesting service the portion when the token identifies a registered user and a consent indicating that the registered user has recorded the consent to allow the requesting service to access the portion; and

receiving an initial registration from the registered user during a registration of the registered user with the requesting service by redirecting the registered user to a consent for access interface of the method, wherein the registered user provides the consent in the consent for access interface.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising, managing the private/sensitive information and the consent in a centralized privacy vault.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising managing a plurality of additional consents defined by the registered user for a plurality of other services in the centralized privacy vault.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising, providing an interface to the registered user for recording the private/sensitive information in a centralized privacy vault and for providing the consent and a plurality of other consents for a plurality of other services.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising, providing an Application Programming Interface (API) for interacting with the requesting service and providing the token for the registered user to the requesting service.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein receiving the initial registration further includes recording the consent in a centralized privacy vault.

7. A method, comprising:

registering consents provided by a user on a per retailer basis, wherein registering further includes:

receiving private/sensitive information from the user during a registration of the user with the method;

receiving the consents during registrations of the user with retailer services of retailers, wherein during those registrations the user is redirected to the method for providing the consents;

storing the consents and the private/sensitive information associated with the consents in a privacy vault;

providing a requesting retailer with a token representing the user and specific consents to the private/sensitive information permitted by the user for the requesting retailer;

receiving from the requesting retailer a request for access to the private/sensitive information, wherein the request including the token and a specific element of the private/sensitive information; and

returning from the privacy vault the specific element when the token includes a proper consent provided by the user for the requesting retailer for access to the specific element.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein providing further includes generating the token when the user records the specific consents for the requesting retailer.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein generating further includes providing the token to the requesting retailer once the token is generated.

10. The method of claim 7 , wherein receiving further includes receiving the request from the requesting retailer through an Application Programming Interface (API) for the requesting retailer to interact with the method.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein receiving further includes mapping a portion of the token to the user and mapping another portion of the token to the specific consents permitted by the user.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein mapping further includes verifying a digital signature provided with the token to ensure the digital signature matches the requesting retailer.

13. The method of claim 7 , wherein returning further includes returning the specific element through an Application Programming Interface (API) with the requesting retailer.

14. The method of claim 7 further comprising, exclusively managing and controlling access to the privacy vault, wherein the requesting retailer and other requesting retailers cannot access the private/sensitive information of the user without providing a valid token to the method.

15. A server, comprising:

a processor configured to execute executable instructions represent a privacy/sensitive information manager;

the privacy/sensitive information manager; and

a privacy vault;

wherein the privacy/sensitive information manager is configured to: (i) record private/sensitive information of a user in the privacy vault exclusively managed by the privacy server, (ii) record consents provided by the user for selective access to portions of the private/sensitive information on a per retailer bases, (iii) provide a user-consent token that is specific to each of the retailers, (iv) verify presented user-consent tokens from requesting ones of the retailers, (v) provide specific elements of the private/sensitive information to any of the retailers that provide a valid user-consent token, and (vi) receive an initial registration from the user during a registration of the user with a requesting retailer service by redirecting the user to a consent for access interface of the privacy/sensitive information manager, wherein the user provides the consents corresponding to the retailer associated with the requesting retailer service in the consent for access interface.

16. The server of claim 15 , wherein the server is a collection of servers logically organized as a cloud processing environment.

17. The server of claim 15 , wherein the privacy/sensitive information manager 401 is further configured, in (ii), to: generate the user-consent token for each retailer based on specific consents provided by the user for each retailer.