MyTerms will give strength to the Internet’s fabric of human connections, through agentic agreements between people and the organizations that serve them.

The Internet is peer-to-peer, by design. It supports agreements between equals, for the good of both. On that equality a massive amount of new and better dealings can be built, on stronger foundations of mutual agency and respect.

MyTerms are contracts, which are binding mutual agreements between parties. They replace consents, which are corporate protections to which individuals can only acquiesce. Consents give individuals no record of having agreed to anything and cannot be audited or enforced. They are also annoying for both individuals and companies, with massive amounts of operational and cognitive overhead. In most cases they also don’t obey the settings people make.

With MyTerms, individuals, operating as first parties, proffer a contract they choose from a limited list posted on a public website by a neutral nonprofit organization. The company, as the second party, can choose to agree to that contract or an alternate specified by the individual from the same list. Both sign the agreement electronically and keep matching records that can be audited later if need be. If the company declines to agree, the individual can keep a record of that choice, which they are free to share.

This process is described in a new standard from the IEEE called P7012, which is due for publication in January 2026. Its nickname is MyTerms, much as the nickname of IEEE 802.11 is Wi-Fi.

The most basic MyTerms agreement is for services only. This resets the marketplace to what we have in the natural world, where one can visit an establishment for the services it provides, in faith that one will not be tracked out of it for any reason, and data about oneself will not be sold or given to others. It also commits the individual to respect for the establishment and the services it provides.

With MyTerms, voluntary and genuine relationships can be built on a foundation of mutual respect and willingness to engage. Following a MyTerms agreement, individuals can selectively disclose information about themselves and their intentions, and additional services might be provided, in mutually agreeable and fruitful ways.

In this manner, companies can come to know individuals far better than has ever been possible through unwelcome surveillance and algorithmic guesswork and manipulation. Genuine relationships can also replace the coercive kind typified by “loyalty” programs meant constantly to manipulate customers. (Consider how marketers, without irony, speak of customers as “targets” to be “acquired,” shoved through a “funnel,” “controlled,” “managed,” and “locked in” as if they were slaves or cattle.)

The MyTerms standard also says that both sides will use machine agents to make agreements. These can be as simple as browser plug-ins on the individual side and server plug-ins on the corporate side. They can also be AI agents, which is why it is opportune for the standard to be published in an age when AI is still a new and rapidly evolving—for both companies and individuals.

For maximized agency on both sides, AI agents must be private instruments of full sovereignty, meaning they work privately and exclusively for each party. They cannot be instruments of surveillance or control by outside actors of any kind. Working exclusively will also maximize agency for both sides.

Civilization requires privacy. Simple as that. We worked out privacy in the natural world with technologies such as clothing and shelter, and well-understood ways to signal our intentions. The digital world, however, is still new, and not civilized. We lack the equivalents of clothing and shelter, and in their absence, surveillance has become the norm. So has the theater of consent, with its insincere and ineffective cookie notices.

The only way to obtain personal privacy and make good on the Internet’s original promises is with mutually beneficial agreements that begin with the simple privacy requirements we as individuals present to the corporations of the world. With MyTerms, we can start civilizing the worldwide public marketplace, making it a safe and productive environment for business, and everything else that depends on it.