Your data speaks volumes. And everyone is listening.
That your data is being haggled over by all who can get their hands on it is no longer even in question, you only need look about you for a moment to begin to fully comprehend the gravity of its appeal. The vast array of data-producing, mining, and storage devices, customer loyalty cards, online bank details, shopping preferences or the darker underground world of identity theft, are all indicative of just how much the world recognises the power of personal data, your personal data. This is the personal data economy. The World Economic Forum calls it the new asset class, and the whole world is trading in it. Your data is a commodity and everyone wants a piece of it, but is it all bad?
Not necessarily. It depends very much on who gets hold of it, and how. It has not yet become a natural reaction for us to check exactly what data we are giving away, what it will be used for and who controls it. Instead of being a point of consideration, the T&C’s box is often just an extra click to get us to where we want to be.
The concept of sharing your personal data isn’t fundamentally a bad thing. There are countless mutual benefits to be had from the controlled sharing of information between individual and organisation, but these can only arise when the individual is in total control of the sharing and is an active participant in a process that they understand and have expressly consented to. If you could share your data when you wanted, with whichever organisation you choose — a trust-based, quality exchange — in return for a measurable benefit, you would, wouldn’t you? Especially if it helped you get something done quickly and easily. You might think twice, though, if it meant being perpetually spammed or having your identity stolen later on down the line.
With a Mydex Personal Data Store, you can get all the benefits of doing that without the downstream risks. A Mydex PDS is a completely private, secure space in which you and only you can access your information. You can choose when and with whom to share your data, in return for a specific benefit or service, in the confidence that you can revoke these sharing permissions at any time. You have a right to privacy and control of your personal data, and a Mydex PDS provides this privacy by design and the controls you need.
The Financial Times created a simple calculator to shed some light on the actual value of your data. While this does not showcase the massive power and countless benefits of a Mydex PDS (including a long term record of all aspects and activities of your life) it does allow you to check out the monetary value of what you’re really giving away each time you click ‘yes’ without reading the T&C’s or let someone access your data without thinking about it.
There is a reason they make it easy for you to say “yes”.
