MyTerms is the only way we’ll get personal privacy in the digital world.
No, corporate and government promises won’t do it. You need to be in charge of your own privacy. MyTerms are how you make that happen.
Its full name is IEEE 7012-2025—Standard for Machine-Readable Personal Privacy Terms. You’re free to read and download it here. It’s been in the works for nine years and was published last month. I chaired its working group.
MyTerms are contractual agreements about personal privacy that you proffer as the first party, and the company agrees to as the second party. With MyTerms, you don’t “consent” to the company’s privacy policies or whatever they say about their use of cookies. They agree to your privacy requirements, which will limit the use of cookies and tracking tech to only what you allow. You are not a mere “user” or “client.” You are an independent human being operating with full agency.
MyTerms will also set the stage for much better agreements and trusted signalling of intentions between customers and companies, making The Intention Economy finally happen.
If a “personal agent” from an AI giant or one of its corporate clients (such as a retailer) is being “agentic” for you, it is not your agent. (Latest example: Google’s “personal intelligence.”)You are just a user: a second party, a dependent variable, an old-school stiff in new-school drag. In the new school, the person is the first party. They speak in the first-person voice and act with full agency.
I’ve written a lot about MyTerms. Here’s a list, with the most recent item on top:
- Now We Begin (29 January 2026)
- The Only Way to Get Privacy Online (13 January 2026)
- Securing the right to be let alone (11 January 2025)
- How the Past Models the Future (8 January 2026)
- Toward a Proof of Concept for MyTerms (7 January 2026)
- How to Civilize Digital Life (7 December 2025)
- A New Era Begins (24 November 2025)
- Privacy is a Contract (11 September 2025)
- Protocols for MyTerms (6 September 2025 in ProjectVRM)
- The Case for MyTerms (14 August 2025)
- The Cluetrain Will Run From Customers to Companies (15 July 2025)
- The MyTerms PAR (6 April 2025 in ProjectVRM)
- If Your Privacy Is in the Hands of Others Alone, You Don’t Have Any (29 January 2024)
- The Most Important Standard in Development Today (11 October 2022, updated 29 January 2025)
Customer Commons , which the IEEE approached with the idea of making MyTerms a standard in 2017, has also set up a site for MyTerms at MyTerms.info. Check it out. If you like, join the MyTerms Alliance as well.
Also check out “MyTerms” wants to become the new way we dictate our privacy on the web, in Ars Technica, and Have You Ever Heard Of ‘My Terms?’ You Will, by Joe Mandese in MediaPost. And also these:
Iain and Nitin are, like me, also on the Customer Commons board.
And if you want to join the conversation about MyTerms, toward making good things happen around it, join the ProjectVRM list. (The MyTerms idea was born at ProjectVRM.)
*Much as the IEEE standard called 802.11 is nicknamed Wi-Fi.