Personal data and Blockchain

From whatever angle you see it, the issue of personal data will always be subject to conflicting interests: on the one hand, those of users, now made aware of their rights, and although slowly, willing to preserve a “free zone” of their privacy; on the other hand, commercial companies, of any location and of any size, willing to increase their performance, thanks to data and the use of “digital traps”.

An engaging market solution could be one that has the ability to break this dissonance by providing a satisfactory response to individuals and stakeholders.
Users themselves, if they can gain an interest, will be more likely to share their data.
It’s a fact now acquired: when I order on a food e-commerce, I intentionally share my geo-localization, otherwise they won’t give me the dinner!
Even if the measures to defend our data are implemented, with “do not track” formulas and similar, or through browser settings, or the rejection of cookies, these solutions are often temporary, incomplete or sometimes ineffective.
Dawn Song, a professor at Berkeley, California, has created a solution that could meet the needs of the user side with the needs of the business: she created Oasis Labs, a start up that aims to create a platform blockchain, able to reduce some problems of privacy and security, allowing people to take back control of their personal data online. Through the use of specialized computer chips and blockchain technology, Song and his engineers are working to build secure zones, incorporating smart contracts into enhanced zones, to give users control over who has access to the data and how they use it.
The Bones, Oasis Labs has done it, testing and developing new privacy guarantees on Uber, which, following a violation of its servers, since 2014 has committed, with the State of New York, to improve the defense and security of its users. The tool used is the so-called differential privacy, a technique used to “dirty” the data, so as to make it anonymous, so as to be defined as a methodology “white noise”, recalling the background noise that makes the source unidentifiable, and eliminating the risks of reverse engineering. Basically, a random element of algorithmic research is used, which, making the data absolutely random, does not associate it with a single user but with a random one: the consequent absolute anonymization transforms the data from personal to non-personal.
Oasis Labs is in full experimentation, and the use of distributed registry technology in combination with smart contracts, will facilitate a direct control of the user on their data and on the companies with which they have shared them.

Oasis Labs is in full experimentation, and the use of distributed registry technology in combination with smart contracts, will facilitate a direct control of the user on their data and on the companies with which they have shared them.

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Raffaella Aghemo, Lawyer