on the internet, you are your data
Who owns your data? Where does it go? How is it used?
example data
what happens when there's a spill?
Who owns your data? Where does it go? How is it used?
example data
Recently consumers are becoming more privacy-aware. Nobody wants an oil spill, or a data breach. Let your customers know how you use their data. This is how to prove to them that you are handling their data carefully.
WheresMyData.org is a collaborative project between academia and industry to facilitate building trust with users.
This project arises from the Berkman Klein Assembly, a program of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
The data transparency project gives companies the platform they need to build trust — trust in how they collect data, use data, and store data.
The data transparency project gives consumers simple, easy-to-use tools to understand what companies are collecting about them, and why.
Trust begins with transparency. When it comes to customer data, doing the right thing makes good business sense.
How does this build trust?
Maintaining logs of how consumer data is used and shared with outside entities is the foundation of transparency and trust. It is the equivalent of a doctor taking patient logs — could you trust any doctor that didn't?
What's going on under the hood?
Companies report when they share user data, and it is stored encrypted in a decentralized database. Consumers can then visualize shares about them after providing they own the identifier the share is about.
WheresMyData.org is a joint project between academia and industry to develop new ways of balancing the needs of consumers and corporations.
We are collecting feedback in the next few months from companies and individuals on how they want to shape this initiative... so help us help you.
The project is in its early stages and we'd welcome your thoughts:
please fill out this short questionnaire
or
email us at feedback@wheresmydata.org
"The project of encouraging some accountability requires fairness in both directions—fairness to end users, and fairness to businesses, who shouldn’t have new and unpredictable obligations dropped on them by surprise."
(Jack Balkin, Yale Law School & Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard Law School)
The Information Fiduciary Consortium will give incentives to companies to adopt more responsibility to protect user privacy. The consortium’s goal is to protect user data. In exchange for committing to fair security and privacy practices around user data collection, analysis, use, disclosure, and sale, companies will benefit from improved user trust.
Download the PDF to find out more
References
Jack M. Balkin, "Information Fiduciaries and the First Amendment", UC Davis Law Review
Jack M. Balkin, Jonathan Zittrain, "A Grand Bargain to Make Tech Companies Trustworthy", The Atlantic
Jonathan Zittrain, "Facebook Could Decide an Election Without Anyone Ever Finding Out", New Republic