Apparatus and articles of manufacture are provided for governing the transfer of data characterizing a user's behavior, physiological parameters and/or psychological parameters. One embodiment provides a computer readable storage medium containing a program which, when executed, performs an operation for handling a request, from a requesting application, for emotion data characterizing an emotional state of a user. A firewall ruleset defining rules governing the transfer of the emotion data to requesting applications is accessed to determine whether to provide the emotion data the requesting application. The request is denied if the firewall ruleset rules are not satisfied.