6 Ways How Profila Helps You Control Personal Data You Share Online
The Profila app provides a set of tools that help you control which data you share with brands - to mutual benefit.
Currently, there isn’t a single solution to solve all unauthorized use or (mis)use of personal data online. You just don’t know what brands and third parties do with your data — (remember Cambridge Analytica)?
This is why we created Profila — a single, blockchain-based platform that puts you in control of everything you share with brands. There are many actions that you can take through it — the solution that exists today has 6 important features that help you better manage your personal data:
1 . Privacy education
Being aware of your privacy rights is the first crucial step in helping you gain control over your data, because this will allow you to give instructions to companies (which you will learn more about in the second feature).
“What is personal data? How long can a brand store personal data? If a brand sells my personal data to third parties, who then notifies me about it? What can I do?”
The Profila app has 9 basic education or “awareness” modules on privacy rights, explaining in understandable terms everything you need to know about privacy and your personal data in order to effectively control it.
Each privacy module tackles a different topic and explains in lay-man terms (although legally correct) and with examples -
- “what is personal data”,
- “what is a controller/processor”,
- “what are your data subject rights”, e.g., “your right to be forgotten”,
- “when can you exercise these rights”,
- “why would you exercise these rights”,
- “is a company obligated to respond”,
and many more.
2. Privacy rights management
Exercising your “data subject rights” (DSRs) is a second crucial step in helping you gain control.
The Profila app also has a dashboard which allows you to manage or effectively exercise your rights, e.g., use your “right to object” to [brand name] to stop sending you daily emails, or use your “right to be forgotten” to ask [brand name] to erase all your personal data (e.g. if you no longer want to be a customer).
“Dear Brand X, I liked your running shoes, but I do not appreciate the daily emails about other products. I therefore send you this “right to object to direct marketing” so I do not receive any more marketing emails.”
Profila reduced this difficult process to an easy 3-click step process, through which you can:
- choose a company logo (recipient of the right request)
- click on one of the 8 data subject rights,
- include an identifier (email; mobile number).
Profila then forwards an email to the brand (with you in copy), which specifies in legal terms your request (so you don’t have to). According to the law that applies to your relationship with this brand (which is determined based on your country of residence/nationality), the brand will be legally required to respond to you within a fixed time-frame (subject to the region you are from), which is usually between 15–30 days.
This rights management functionality is already implemented on the Cardano blockchain as part of the Project Catalyst challenge (Fund5 “metadata”, which you can read more about here). Our funded project — called “Control your data — privacy ledger” is committing (hashed) information from this transaction onto the Cardano blockchain, in order to provide rights requested proof for future reference.
Here’s more info on Profila & Cardano:
3. Personal data management
Managing your personal data is the third crucial step in gaining control over your data.
If you build up an accurate (digital) profile of yourself in the Profila app, you are the owner of this one source of true data about yourself.
You can fill out your personal data section (include your email, date of birth, name, picture, languages you speak etc.), and take our self-discovery “category quizzes”, which are an enjoyable and interactive way for you to capture your preferences and thoughts via text or picture-based questionnaires. These feature topics like Food & Drink, Fashion, TV preferences, Entertainment, and many more.
Once you fill out a Quiz, the data selected gets added to your Profila and increases the value of the digital profile.
You can then ask brands to subscribe to this dataset if they want to get to know you. This provides them with a better view on who you are and what you like than the inferred data about you that is available online, or the increasingly inaccurate data they hold in their own CRM systems.
It is you who holds the keys to what brands want most - the data about who you are and what you like today.
This profile can then be shared — by you, the individual alone — in exchange for a fee from brands you like, and ultimately for more personalized products and services, via the channel of your preference and at the pace you indicated.
4. Data subscriptions
Controlling who has access to your data is the fourth crucial step in helping you gain control.
“Dear brand Y, I will grant you access to my email address and my clothing preferences, but only during the summer, because I only want to receive offers on surf and swimwear, and only contact me via WhatsApp and Profila, because I probably wouldn’t read it if you send it via email.”
Where does your personal data reside and who has access to it? “Data subscriptions” is Profila’s functionality which allows you to keep track of the data you shared with brands, including information about what kind of data, the purpose and duration, and ultimately receive compensation from brands that subscribe to your data (personal data is never sold).
Via Profila’s web-based dashboard, a brand can send a “subscription offer” to (existing or new) customers, in which they fill out key contractual terms:
- specific personal data they require,
- duration which you grant access for,
- purpose for which they want to use it,
- compensation you receive in exchange.
Here’s what this offer looks like in the Profila app:
This process makes sure the brand explains the terms in understandable language, so you know exactly what you agree to.
Our revenue model is 50/50, meaning that every EUR that a brand pays for accessing your personal data (and showing you its products/services), we share 50/50 with consumers.
This is why we say:
People are our partners, and brands are our customers.
If you do not agree to these terms, you remain anonymous and the brand will never see your personal data. You ultimately control whether data is shared, or not.
If you do agree to these terms, you click “Accept” and conclude a data subscription contract together with the brand. Payment is made by the brand at intervals throughout the contract terms (usually monthly), on the conditions that your personal data is kept up to date, and the brand can also access additional data about your preferences for certain products and services relevant to them.
Let’s borrow a specific example from our Whitepaper to illustrate:
Wholefoods pays Alice 12 USD/year (1 USD each month) to access her:
- personal data (email, phone),
- preferences about food (vegetarian, bio-products, lactose intolerant)
- communication preferences (Alice would like to receive discounts/product info via WhatsApp and Profila).
This helps Wholefoods serve Alice better. If Wholefoods listens to Alice, she will be a happy customer. Alice gets the products she likes and the service she requested, receiving compensation for the use of her personal data by Wholefoods.
5. Customer feedback and NFTs
As part of our mission to improve private 1:1 communication between people and brands, Profila has a feature called “Consumer Moments” and “Brand Moments”.
Consumer Moments are a great way to capture your opinions or sentiments on any topic, and share content or feedback with a specific brand, in a private and personal manner. A Consumer Moment is a photo or video that you can create and share in Profila, to which you can attach a comment and/or an emoji to express your thoughts and sentiment.
Let’s clarify this using an example of a good brand experience:
You are and have always been a Nike fan. You had your favorite pair of Nike running shoes for many years and are now looking to replace them. This is a perfect moment to share this with Nike. You take one last picture of your Nike shoes, asking Nike for suggestions on a new pair.
Once you capture the Consumer Moment, you can take the following actions to add relevance to the picture or video:
- tag it to an industry “category” (e.g., tag the category “Adventure” or “sports” because it relates to shoes)
- tag a relevant brand (e.g., tag “Nike” if you want Profila to send the content to Nike)
- add sentiment to it (e.g., a smiley face emoticon or thumbs up).
Once you are ready, you can send it directly to the Brand, who will be able to respond directly to your shared Consumer Moment with their own Brand Moment. Nike appreciates your picture and then responds with an exclusive offer for a new pair of Nike running shoes.
This scenario also works for a bad experience. If you bought your expensive Nike running shoes and they break on day 1, you can also take a picture or make a video, add a negative/unhappy emoticon, clarify you just bought them, and send it off to Nike for urgent feedback and resolution.
We recently developed this feature into an NFT platform, which lets you control how a brand can use your customer feedback via the creation of NFTs that include terms of usage. If a brand uses your content externally or commercially, they will have to buy your content as an NFT.
Read more about this NFT use case here:
6. “Metronome” - toolbox for telling brands how to contact you
A final feature in the Profila app which allows you to control how brands use your data is called “Metronome”.
Named after the music accessory that helps you keep the right cadence while playing an instrument, metronome will give you the ability to control the channel preference, cadence, and type of communication that a brand can send you.
In short, it enables you to have full control over the flow through the “pipes”.
You can do this by controlling the following:
Channel
What channel do you want a brand to use to send you content? Choose if this should be “Profila”, email, WhatsApp, paper mail, telephone, or anything else you prefer for a specific relationship.
Cadence
How many offers/ads do you wish to receive per brand relationship within a defined period (per week, per month)? You can even put the slider at “0” when you are on vacation, so you can let a brand know you do not want to receive any messages at all.
Type of communication
What kinds of content do you wish to receive? Maybe you like specific info about new products, but you do not want all these weekly company updates. Choose what gets into your mailbox (or other preferred channel like Profila) and stop the clutter.
Your use of Metronome will result in brands sending you less content (e.g., emails) - but when they do, it will be more relevant and via the channel of your choice. All of this leads you to a better relationship (and more effective marketing spend for brands).
We developed Moments because, let’s face it - nobody wants meaningless and untimely messages from brands they don’t like.
Follow us to track our progress
If you want to know more about this project, feel free to join the Profila community, where we will give periodical updates, share drafts papers of our research and much more.
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