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Blockchain has already shown its enormous influence on the financial world with its first application in the form of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It may not be long before its impact is felt everywhere.
Blockchain is a secure chain of digital records that exist on multiple computers simultaneously, so no records can be deleted or falsified. The redundancy of the system ensures numerous backups and the lack of a central storage place ensures that there is no single target for hackers. Some suggest that blockchain could become a component of the next generation of the Internet.
Many blockchain systems provide a technology called "intelligent contract": these are the rules by which you can access and modify records by creating new versions. These rules define, for example, who accesses the archived records, under what conditions, for what stated purpose and in exchange for what (virtual payment or credit). Smart contracts also record every access to data in the blockchain.
In this way, users can store their data permanently and securely, set their own conditions and control who accesses the data and for what purpose. Thanks to these features, blockchain technology can be used to store user profile data.
Data hoarding
Currently, social media giants accumulate user data and use it to sell targeted advertisements (their main source of income). These social media networks do not offer users a real choice or awareness of what data is stored. They provide very few control options and no reward for users in exchange for their data.
Recently, we have seen many cases where user data has been stolen by hackers, leading to breaches of privacy, the possibility of identity theft or exploitation of data to manipulate people and influence public opinion. against the vote. This can have serious consequences for the democratic process in a liberal society.
Mark Lennihan / AP
The unauthorized use of personal data is difficult to trace. But blockchain can change it. Instead of collecting data from millions of users for large companies, every user can keep keys to access their data.
Currently, there is no universal method for tracking who shared what, with whom, when and for what purposes in a verifiable manner. My current research addresses these problems by incorporating blockchain technology.
Privacy controlled by the user
One of the elements of user data sharing would be the control of who can share data and with what means and how users can be incentivized to share data. Smart contracts allow you to store these access control policies securely on the blockchain. Blockchain provides an unalterable record of all transactions. Users can also be incentivized with monetary rewards to share their data with commercial companies.
I researched how a blockchain-based system can keep user data safe, provide access control and the origin of their property and encourage them to share their data. My recent work, presented at the International Conference on Blockchain in Seattle in March 2018, is the first in the field of research data sharing and has aroused much interest.
Julita Vassileva, a university professor and researcher at the University of Saskatchewan, worked on ways that allow users to control the sharing of their data, as well as provide incentives that preserve user control and provide incentives for sharing . The guidance and supervision of Vassileva led me to experiment with blockchain technology to implement this framework. This led to an award-winning research paper, which I presented at the Future Technologies Conference 2017. The paper proposes a blockchain-based system to share users' personal data between tourism businesses.
Sharing can be thoughtful
We need new data sharing practices so that we can maximize what we learn from research. For example, in both medicine and health care, both personalized patient care and medical research can benefit from sharing research data from clinical studies.
Similar to changes in the business world, service customization is constantly evolving. Various data associated with users' profiles and behavior are shared among commercial companies. This information is used to better help companies reach their customers and improve the quality of their services. Much of the data is provided voluntarily by the user; others are obtained from the observation of user activities or derived from advanced analyzes of voluntary or observed data.
Users must become active participants who benefit from the personal data economy. Blockchain and smart contracts can support users in the following ways:
(1) Give users complete transparency about who accesses their data, when and for what purpose;
(2) allow users to specify the purposes of data sharing, what types of data can be shared and which applications or companies can access data;
(3) Provide incentives for users to share their data (in terms of payment for the use of data by applications, as specified in the contracts).
My research project develops guidelines and methods to incorporate privacy, user transparency, control and incentives from the start of designing a data sharing framework. This is an alternative to what exists at present, providing a platform that users can trust to protect their data, control over them and share them the way they want.
