Sandboxing Applications is the Future
How to Sandbox Your Personal Data and Have It Work For You
What is ‘Sandboxing’?
Let’s begin by clarifying what ‘sandboxing’ can mean. Wikipedia defines a technical sandbox as:
“a testing environment that isolates untested code changes and outright experimentation from the production environment or repository…”
and further highlights that:
‘Sandboxing protects “live” servers and their data.’
For our intents and purposes, we can think of sandboxing as a way to partition a certain object (e.g. a piece of software or data) and isolate it from other objects (e.g., software or servers, in order to protect or guarantee the integrity of the certain object). For instance, we may want to ‘sandbox” an application so that it cannot interact or communicate with any other applications.
Apple has been one the forefront in implementing solutions that allow privacy on devices. But what if the data set is far larger than what the device can hold? Some datasets, such as photos or genetics data, can by themselves be north of 50–100gb and really clog up your device if you were to store them locally on your phone.
Shubh Patni argues for an Apple VPN as a solution, with which, for the record, I agree with in principle. However, a VPN only provides benefits in privacy and does not address the issue of the value we are supposed to be getting from our data.
Prifina’s Sandboxing Approach
Our proposal with Prifina is by using mature cloud infrastructure, specifically, the Personal Data Cloud and Sandbox, to enable easy importing, uploading, managing of personal data and the data itself that software allows you to bring into your Personal Data Cloud. The data is organized into objects in the local environment, and further productized into different profiles, segments, etc. that support different use cases and the data is usable in the “Local” Cloud Environment.
Such local cloud environments consist of (a) AWS instances created for every single user and (b) open-source software that helps perform various data importing and management functions.
The Prifina environment is built as a React environment allowing developers to build React components and submit them as applications into the Prifina application. These apps use props or context providers as the interface to connect with the users’ personal data.
In this Personal Data Cloud and Sandbox, the user can install different applications that run in their own environment, and the applications they install are sandboxed into the environment, where their communication capabilities with external servers are restricted.
This Personal Data Cloud and Sandbox could be compared to an ecosystem that is similar to Apple’s Testflight for testing applications before they are submitted to the App Store and published; or an environment where you as a developer can release, install and run applications in your own cloud environment fully simulating an end-user running your application.
To further build the experience, you can import your own personal data using Prifina’s tools (or even uploading them manually yourself if you want full control). This way you can test your application with your “testing data”, which in fact is the real deal, just your own. The software and the data are sandboxed in your environment, they are not going anywhere.
Here you can see the personal Sandbox environment launching an app:
The future of applications may indeed be more private, but it should not be less valuable for individuals. To make data usable a sandboxing approach can work well, however, for larger datasets handheld devices simply are not large enough. Modern cloud infrastructure can support this aim, with a distributed setup per individual and smart open-source tools in the application layer.
Developers can get started at:
Connect With Us and Stay in Touch
Prifina allows you, as an individual, to bring your data from different devices and services into one place under your control. Then, you can take that data and power different applications that give you daily value, such as insights or recommendations, without sharing it with anyone.
You can follow us on Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn, and Facebook or listen to our podcast. Join our Facebook group Liberty. Equality. Data. where we share notes about Prifina’s progress. You can also explore our Github channel.
