Building User Trust with Oasis Parcel

How giving users control of their data can help grow your product.

Personal data is critical to many modern products. It’s the lifeblood of digital services. From search histories to GPS location to genome data, whether they realize it or not, users trust businesses with some of their most personal information. To date, the vast majority of users have handed this data without hesitation, perhaps not understanding the value of the information they were sharing or the extent to which it could be misused.

Increasing Consumer Concerns

Users are more aware than ever of how their information is handled — even going so far as to not use products that misuse personal data. For example, in a recent Pew research study nearly 80% of respondents said they were “very/somewhat concerned about how businesses use the data they collect.” In a recent study MState study, 24% of respondents went so far as to stop using certain applications because of privacy concerns.

This shift is largely driven by a lack of control and a violation of trust. Once data is shared, a company’s privacy policy often allows them to use the data for purposes far beyond the original intent. Personal genome sequencing companies made headlines for selling aggregated genome data to pharmaceutical companies for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars per record. Social media companies like Facebook have been criticized for their ad targeting platforms that consume troves of user data, and often fail to adequately protect it. One of the most noteworthy examples of this was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where a political firm was able to acquire private data on millions of Facebook users without their consent. Even seemingly innocent mobile apps, like WeatherBug, were caught tracking detailed logs of user’s location data and selling it to data aggregators as a way to supplement their revenue. Several of these aggregators claim to have location data for over 200 million mobile devices in the US — a number that equates to a massive private surveillance.

Building credibility with users by showing that your product respects personal data is thus critical for the success of modern tech services. At Oasis, we believe offering better privacy and data control as tentpole features is the first step towards establishing trust with your users. In fact, the same MState study noted that users want more control over how their data is used and would be more comfortable sharing their data if it’s protected.

Providing Data Control & Privacy with Oasis Parcel

At Oasis, we’re building tools to help businesses make privacy and security a tent-pole feature of their offering. Our new product, Oasis Parcel, allows your users to own the data they share with your app — increasing customer trust while reducing your regulatory and custodial risk. With Parcel’s companion user interface, Oasis Steward, your customers can see all of their personal data, which apps have access, and how it’s being consumed.

How it works

As users input data into your app, it’s encrypted and stored with the Parcel API. Access is controlled by predefined policies that detail how you intend to use the data. Users can then opt in and out of these policies through the Steward app or your own user portal, granting access if they agree with the terms. Each policy is specific to an individual field or dataset, giving users detailed control over usage. Plus, jargon-free policy explanations help users understand exactly how you intend to use their data — increasing customer trust and loyalty. As your company launches new features and revenue streams, you can request new policy opt-ins from your users or even survey them for new data.

Once access has been granted, Parcel allows for analysis with built-in support for Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). TEEs are a form of security technology that isolates computation and ensures only expected programs can operate on data. This provides your customers with guarantees that any computation adheres to their policies and that your app can’t misuse their information. A credit-scoring app, for example, could run an analysis and return results to its user, without ever revealing sensitive information like their social security number or bank statements to the application owner. The user gets the benefit of a credit score, while remaining confident that their data is only used for the analysis they requested.

Using our secure data storage and TEEs, you can reduce your system’s exposure to raw, sensitive data — helping avoid the custodial risk of protecting the data yourself. Plus, with usage specific opt-in and user owned data, Oasis Parcel makes it easier to comply with new regulations like CCPA and GDPR.

Looking Forward

At Oasis, we’re working with businesses to change how they use sensitive data, restoring users’ trust in digital products and incentivizing individuals to participate in a fair, transparent data economy. We believe that by promoting privacy best practices and helping mediate a fair exchange of data, businesses and individuals alike can unlock new value and discoveries.

If you’d like to learn more about Oasis products and how they can help your app be more private, visit our website or email us at bd@oasislabs.com.

Oasis Labs was founded in 2018 by Dawn Song, a MacArthur Fellow and professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Backed by top investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Accel and many others, Oasis Labs is building a platform for a responsible data economy. It aims to help users regain control of their data and enable privacy-preserving applications, like collaborative data sharing and analysis.