Tech Companies Are Scoring You. How You Can Use This To Your Advantage.

James Greaves
Aug 31, 2018 · 3 min read

If you control your own identity, then you also gain control of your own AI and other big data tools that the large surveillance economy companies already use on you.

Imagine a world where you can share your own composite scores for things.

Composite scores? Yes — you have them already. You know you have a credit score, but companies are actually scoring you all the time, based on publicly available information and information they scrape from databases such as phone records, social profiles, and government data like court records.

Governments score you for your likelihood to be a terrorist, companies score you based on your ability to invest, Facebook has a trust score for you. The list goes on. We actually don’t know all the different ways you are scored.

Scores are a convenient way for companies to make decisions. They also sidestep regulations about sharing your personal information. For example, rather than sharing everything I know about you, which could be illegal, I can look at it all myself, check it against a table of known risks or benefits, and share a score that I make. I’m now no longer sharing your personal information, but my opinion about you.

Which is kind of cool, and also unnerving.

So, if you have control of all your own data, say through Glyph, then you can use your scores yourself.

In the next few years you will gain control of your own scores. Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

We are building an infrastructure where you will be able to open up your personal data to services you choose and trust, in order to check your data and provide you with reliable third party scores. Most importantly, you will know they are being used (knowing is half the battle), and of course you will be able to audit how they were made and how they line up with the information you already have. You can then choose to share them or not. It will be completely up to you.

Why would you do this? Well, now you know how it works, it actually provides you more privacy and power.

For example, rather than sharing your entire browsing history with a company, you could share a browsing history score for specific attributes, such as the kind of products you have been interacting with recently online — your score for the likelihood you are about to buy a new car, or have a baby, for example.

You could also share an investment profile that you could provide to your broker (such as risk appetite), based on reviewing your purchasing history, your financial accounts, and your current savings plans — all without sharing any of that sensitive data.

Trust underpins all financial markets and all human interaction. We need more tools to help us increase trust. Photo by bruce mars from Pexels

In other words, you can choose to give others deep insight about yourself, while withholding almost all your information. You get better, tailored service, which means less time spent and better service. Companies save time and sell more too.

In an economy where trust increases, all boats rise.

With the current tools we have, we’re some way to doing that already. eCommerce, online advertising and social media have made it so much easier already. The only problem is they have done it at the cost of upfront trust because they have mined you without your understanding. The massive erosion of trust has been caused because they steal your information and use it without really explaining what they are doing.

But the good news is, at least we know how to make it better. Now we just have to vote with our wallets.

Written by

CEO of glyph.id a single self identity platform using emerging technology (inc. AI and blockchain) to increase global freedom, prosperity and trust.

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