麻豆传媒

OUR digital footprints are constantly being hoovered up. Companies like Facebook and Google use our data to tailor services to us, and turn a profit. Yet we have almost no way to exploit our own data, or discover what others are learning about us.

Now that鈥檚 changing. At the MyData conference in Helsinki last week, hundreds of researchers, policy-makers and start-ups discussed new services that give us novel insights about ourselves and even let us make a return on our data.

At present, individuals have very little control or say when using social networks or shopping online: we essentially provide data and get targeted with ads. But the rise of ad blockers, now used by hundreds of millions of people, shows that the deal is not working. 鈥淲e think there鈥檚 a perfect storm brewing with personal data,鈥� Jamie Smith of digital consultancy Ctrl-Shift told the delegates.

Enter those offering an alternative. Next month, London-based start-up CitizenMe will launch an app that lets users easily see just what data they are sharing. 鈥淭here鈥檚 so much information about you spread around the internet,鈥� says founder StJohn Deakins. 鈥淵ou can pull that into one place. Then what do you do with it?鈥�

For CitizenMe, the answer is to give users what Deakins calls a 鈥渄igital mirror鈥�. Having pulled in information about you from social networks, it then tells you things about yourself and your surroundings that you may not have known 鈥� that you are the only single person on your street, for example.

Such insights are commercially valuable. CitizenMe, which started out as a market research service, now pays its users small fees if they elect to share their data with brands and researchers anonymously 鈥� for example, by answering a short questionnaire or sharing their last few tweets.

鈥淲e have people at the moment earning 拢8 a week,鈥� Deakins says. That鈥檚 not much, but it will buy you lunch. As people add more valuable data sets to the platform, they鈥檒l be able to earn more.

鈥淭he system can tell you things about yourself and your surroundings that you may not have known鈥�

We could also use our data to make tiresome transactions easier. Australian start-up Meeco is running a pilot project with a bank and telecoms company, in which customers鈥� mobile phone data is used to verify their identity when opening an account with the bank. This saves them the hassle of the usual verification process, and like CitizenMe, Meeco lets people choose how much data they want to share.

UK start-up Digi.me helps people copy as much of their data from social networks as possible, making it all searchable on their own devices. The plan is to let users plug in their medical data as well, and then provide individual health insights by mining that data on their behalf.

Adding value

Neil Lawrence at the University of Sheffield, UK, who is an adviser to CitizenMe, says there is a niche for these new personal data firms. But they need to be easy to use and to offer people something of value, he says. 鈥淗ealth data is a domain where this could happen.鈥�

Even Facebook 鈥� often seen as the antithesis of allowing individuals to manage access to their personal data 鈥� is coming around. 鈥淲hen people have more control over their own data, more growth, innovation and value can be created than when they don鈥檛,鈥� Stephen Deadman, Facebook鈥檚 global deputy chief privacy officer, wrote in a report the firm commissioned from Ctrl-Shift. What this means in practice remains to be seen, however.

But new laws may force Facebook鈥檚 hand and give personal data services a boost. The European Union鈥檚 General Data Protection Regulation, which kicks in from May 2018, contains a raft of provisions focusing on individuals鈥� control of personal data. For instance, it requires companies to get explicit consent for all the data they collect and the purposes they use it for 鈥� which could stop the current practice of siphoning up data and sitting on it until a use emerges.

鈥淭he best outcome for personal data is that we all naturally think of data as we think of money,鈥� says Lawrence: some money we keep full control of, some we share with trusted parties who manage it for our benefit. 鈥淭he worst outcome is that we end up with a 鈥榙igital oligarchy鈥�, where data is controlled on our behalf by powerful entities which lack accountability,鈥� he says.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淧ut your data to work鈥�