Blockchain on guard of personal data
What is the problem?
The general public finally realized that personal data is far from being used only for annoying contextual advertising.
It must be understood that personal data is not limited to birthday and city of residence. Correspondence, financial and medical data, geolocation tags, addresses, search histories, preferences and interests are far from a complete list of information stored on the servers of companies whose products are popular social networks. At the same time, despite all attempts to protect virtual databases from hacking, you can not rely on their reliability.
According to a Gemalto research, in 2017 alone, 2 billion 600 million different personal records were compromised. An average of 82 records every second.
How will blockchain help?
Blockchain technology will allow users to independently store personal data and completely control their transfer to someone, so the need to blindly trust corporations in the safety of data will simply disappear. In this case, personal information will be stored under the protection provided by cryptographic encryption methods. The distributed database architecture itself creates the perfect combination of data transparency, immutability, and decentralization.
Blockchain technology is often tried to be implemented where it is not particularly needed. In the case of its application to ensure the security of personal data, as well as creating a single online identifier, blockchain technology is indeed an ideal solution.
Using a blockchain in this case will play into the hands of all counterparties. User personal data will be stored exclusively on their devices, and not on remote third-party servers. Users will be able to choose to whom to transfer personal information, as well as independently determine the level of access to this information.
State institutions, using blockchain technology, will be able to standardize the issuance of digital documents, as well as significantly accelerate the processes of issuing, updating or withdrawing them. In addition, the same institutions require many suppliers of goods and services to undergo the KYC procedure when working with clients. To do this, customers need to confirm their identity, most often by providing documents. Many services, for example, require from their users not only a passport scan, but also a selfie with the original document.
All the necessary set of standardized digital documents can be stored on the blockchain, which will significantly speed up the verification of customers and partners and will allow you to go through the KYC procedure almost instantly. It is in this direction that IBM is currently working, developing the Trusted Identity solution together with the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
In addition, the non-profit organization ID2020, together with global governments and giants like Microsoft, Accenture, Hyperledger, UNICC and Mercy Corps, is actively working to create personal identifiers on the blockchain. The Alliance is looking for a way to help approximately 1.2 billion people living without any evidence of their existence. Due to the lack of documents, millions of refugees, including women and children, are not able to receive medical assistance or benefits, not to mention education, a bank account or participation in elections.
A huge number of small startups are working on less global solutions. For example, the SecureKey service, founded back in 2008 and built on the IBM blockchain, allows you to securely store your passport data to verify your identity with governments, banks and providers of various services. Using the blockchain allows endowing users with complete control and avoiding the formation of centralized repositories of personal data, which are very prone to hacker attacks.
Sovrin Foundation went a different way. A startup gives users the ability to create personal identifiers that can include anything from a plane ticket to a driver’s license. In fact, this is an additional layer of protection between the user and the rest of the Internet. All this works, naturally, on the blockchain.
