How Web 3.0 communication solutions will change the future of privacy and personal data
The internet has become an essential part of our daily lives. Even in the least developed areas globally, the internet is still being utilized, making our lives easier.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on iFeng.com, and has been translated into English.
The internet has become an essential part of our daily lives. Even in the least developed areas globally, the internet is still being utilized, making our lives easier. It is also one of the driving factors of many innovative and powerful technologies. We are still surfing through the tide of Web 2.0 in online technology development. Web 2.0 indicates the present internet era of social media led connectivity and enhanced communications. One of the most crucial questions regarding the Web 2.0 era is the security and proper usage of personal data.
Most of us know that time is money, but data is more valuable in this time of the internet era. This is why hackers are targeting big companies such as Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. The idea is that these significant companies virtually hold the majority of the data on the internet. Another incident that people are familiar with is the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, which mined data from millions of Facebook users.
Search engines control and store data that users create through their search queries and then to data centers, where it is mined and sold to businesses. Likewise, social media sites such as Facebook now have their own data centers, located in remote areas that it maintains significantly. Because of these, users are now becoming increasingly intentional about what types of data they share — and with whom.
Internet users are becoming more careful with their data
According to McKinsey’s survey, 71% of the respondents said that they would stop doing business with a company if it gives away sensitive information without permission. In response, companies have introduced “end-to-end encryption” (E2EE) solutions. End-to-end encryption is a communication system that allows only the people in the conversation to read the messages. No eavesdropper can access the cryptographic keys needed to decrypt the conversation, now even the company that runs the service.
“End-to-end encryption is a vital tool for protecting certain kinds of data transmission, but it’s just one small piece of the puzzle, and it does nothing to protect metadata — like who is sending data to whom, when, where, how much and how often — which is often more revealing,” says Dr. Sebastian Bürgel, Founder of HOPR, a network that allows people and companies to have control over their level of data privacy.
Experts have argued that E2EEis not enough as it can still be subjected to man-in-the-middle-attacks and hidden backdoors. For example, a backdoor was discovered for WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption. This is a vulnerability that could be putting millions of messages’ privacy in danger. Thankfully, there is a technology that can address this current threat to internet users’ privacy and security.
How web 3.0 can address privacy concerns
“The primary benefit of Web3 communication should be privacy and anonymity by default for users. Currently, emails do not use any end to end encryption and so can be easily spoofed, as we see from many phishing attacks. Messaging platforms like Telegram use end to end encryption with the platform, but the platform itself knows all the content of your messages,” says Harry Halpin, Chief Executive Officer of Nym Technologies, is an open-source, decentralized, permissionless, and incentivized system.
Blockchain platforms are attempting to become the next generation of the internet’s decentralized protocols, web 3.0. Since this will be powered by blockchain technology, rather than storing data in centralized databases, in the 3.0, data of users will be stored in a secure and decentralized data storage protocol.
“While end-to-end encryption ensures no observer monitoring the network can see the content of your message; ultimately, your data is stored with a trusted third party even if the data is inaccessible due to encryption. Decentralized/Web 3 communication, on the other hand, is secure and does not require a trusted third party to store your data,” says Siddharth Dutta, Chief Executive Officer of Marlin, an open protocol that provides high-performance programmable network infrastructure for DeFi and Web 3.0.
The decentralization of data and file storage has crucial ramifications for data ownership. Personal information is no longer stored in large data centers and databases owned by big companies. Rather, all users, personal data, applications, and connected devices are not controlled by a single company. Undoubtedly, this would likely lead to a dramatic decrease in privacy breaches.
“Online users nowadays are concerned about their activities being tracked, monitored, and mined for data — whether it’s websites, internet providers, or even smartphones. Existing Web 2.0 solutions have been incapable to protect users’ privacy — this is why we will see an imminent rise in decentralized Web 3.0 communication protocols,” explains Kenny Au, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Elevate Ventures, an international ventures firm.
Bottomline
Although blockchain technology can provide internet users with more control over their data, the platforms, protocols, and decentralized applications may have difficulty going through the regulatory landscape. For example, issues such as deleting or changing personal information on the blockchain and determining the controller and processor are still difficult to reconcile.
Without a centralized system collecting and processing personal data, the current regulatory privacy framework may not be enough for the web 3.0. Nonetheless, the most significant complication will possibly be making decentralized platforms and applications more convenient and user-friendly for the average user.
Image credit: Pixabay
Featured in this story
Harry Harpin — NYM
Harry Haplin is Chief Executive Officer at Nym Technologies SA. He is a philosophy of the web, and all-around radical open internet advocate. Harry has extensive experience in the crypto space, having managed 7 Million Euros worth of funding to drive crypto research towards standardization and commercialization, and previously worked at W3C, where he left due to W3C’s standardization of DRM.
Siddhartha Dutta (Marlin)
Siddhartha Dutta is the founder and CEO of Marlin Protocol. He previously worked at Zilliqa as a Core Developer and Microsoft as a Software Engineer. He graduated with a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) with Honors in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Siddhartha owns 2 patents and has 2 publications related to converting text sentences into images.
Rik Kreiger (HOPR)
Rik Krieger is a Co-Founder at HOPR. A data privacy protocol that allows anyone to run HOPR nodes that mix traffic and protect data privacy while earning tokens. He holds an Executive MBA from the University of Zurich and has extensive experiences in Business-Development.
Kenny Au (Elevate Ventures)
Kenny Au is the founder of Elevate Ventures. Elevate Ventures is a Technology Ventures and Advisory firm.. The team at Elevate Ventures has extensive experience in fintech and blockchain sectors focused in South East Asia and China.
