With all the personal information we are entering online for Web 2.0 Services, many have started asking - is the data still ours? Can you as the content creator modify the information? And can you take it back?
Hence the vision of Data portability. Data portability enables a borderless experience where people can easily move between network services, reusing data they provide while controlling their privacy and respecting the privacy of others.
For the User:
With data portability, you can bring your identity, friends, conversations, files and histories with you without having to manually add them to each new service. Each of the services you use can draw on this information relevant to the context. As your experiences accumulate and you add or change data, this information will update on other sites and services if you permit it without having to revisit others to re-enter it.
For the Service Provider:
With cross-system data access, interoperability, and portability, people can bring their identities, friends, conversations, files, and histories with them to your service, cutting down on the need for form-filling which can drive people away. With minimal effort on the part of new customers, you can tailor services to suit them. When your customers browse networked services and accumulate experiences, this information can update on your service, if people permit it. Your relationship remains up-to-date and you can adapt your services in response, even when they don't visit. With mutual control and mutual benefit, your relationships remain relevant, encouraging continued usage.
Data portability is a new approach, where it is easier to use and deliver services. This frictionless movement through the network of services fosters stronger relationships between people and services providers and helps build a healthy networked ecosystem.
Google and Facebook have recently signed on to support the The Data Portability Project
Your Information, your Choice The Privacy Commissioner of Canada's Blog on Data Portability, shows how this is a concern not only for privacy and security groups but a concern of governments.
Canada's PIPEDA Legislation, the protection of personal information is Canada's National Privacy Act.
Why are you paying to view your own personal information? Who is gathering this information for sale?
Spock.com : Spock uses a spider to crawl websites specifically for personal information. They then post this collected data together in one place, optimize it for search engines and wait till you google yourself (or get googled) for you to sign up and manage that data.
An ongoing practice of credit agencies is to charge consumers to see their own credit scores. Transunion, for example, charges a whopping $14.95 for a basic credit report.
Alec Saunders article Call for a Privacy Manifesto for the Web 2.0 Era describes 4 principles that users should have online with their online personal information.
Also check out A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web by Joseph Smarr, Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, Michael and Arrington.
- OpenID, OAuth, Poco and Open Stack Bingo - thesocialweb.tv. Identity Wars - who will be the Identity Manager of choice across the internet,offering Federated Identity and User Data Sharing across Social Web Site? When a user signs on to one site, data from across all sites can be shared. For example, Plaxo will be doing away with User Registration Forms. Share data / content across web.
We will have to see how all of this plays out. There is a concern about identity theft and seamless authentication between web services and how easy it will be to unravel the onion. Will one mistake at a global identity manager be enough allow seamless access? Will two factor authentication be a requirement before all of this federated single--sign-on occurs? This has a lot of great features for business, marketing, and the end user usability, but we will have to see if the framework can hold up, how many ways will there be to digitially become anyone you want to be. How many online identities will automatically be linked between providers and service subscribers? How much data sharing of your personal information will you be allowed to opt out of the in the beginning.
Leave a comment