In a world that increasingly prioritizes anonymity, privacy, and data curation, it is only natural that someone would be curious to know what kind of data is being collected when XY Sentinels perform a Bound Witness. Is it personal information? My own location or the location of other objects?
Larry Smalheiser, our Head of Communications, often has to explain the XYO Network to curious people, and here’s a great quote of his:
When any two nearby beacons (Sentinels) come into proximity, they do a handshake (like taking a selfie) of the mutual location verification. Then when they come back into range of the Bridge that’s in your kit, that “handshake” and location verification data is passed onto the Bridge, which has the direct network connection. If you come into contact with a handful of beacons during any particular outing, then again when you get back to the Bridge, the record of those handshakes (and no personal data) is offloaded to the Bridge where it then goes through the network to the nearest Archivist, where it can work with Diviners in case there are pending location queries.
Essentially, all the Sentinels are doing is confirming that they interacted with one another. It does not take your personal data, and you don’t even need to carry an XY Sentinel around with you if you don’t want to! Sentinels can be placed in stationary locations like your mailbox, your desk at work, or your mother-in-law’s home (just make sure she knows it’s there!).
If you want to verify locations on the go, then you can also place a Sentinel in an object that travels a little more, like a purse, a car, a luggage, or something else. The Sentinel can store those interactions, and then you can connect to a bridge later to offload them to an Archivist via a Bridge. If you want a Bridge on the go too, you can look into our beta Android Bridge app! It’s available on the Play Store now.
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