Mydex

Personal Data Stores help individuals undertake a range of information management tasks including:

• Storing personal data
• Managing this data
• Sharing it
• Collecting and receiving data to build a personal data database
• Verifying data
• Idenitity assurance and fraud protection
• Privacy management
• Managing preferences and permissions
• Expressing interests and intentions
• Planning and implementing projects

Data storage

Personal Data Stores help individuals store, access and use the information they need to manage their daily lives. At any one time we have a commercial relationship with about 200 different suppliers, all of them generating some information which needs to be stored, accessed and used at some point in time. In real life what tends to happen is that a) this information gets scattered across many places (a filing cabinet here, an email there), and b) when we need it, we can’t find it. Personal Data Stores create a single, secure, easy-to-access store for such information so that when we need it it’s at our finger tips.

Data management

Personal Data Stores help us manage this information better by  giving us tools to undertake a wide range of information management tasks. These include: gather, store, authenticate, verify, share, protect, combine, sort, correlate, anonymise, audit, record, provide identification, authorise, give permission/s.

Data sharing

Personal Data Stores provide individuals with sophisticated tools for information sharing  that enable them to specify what information they wish to share with which organisations, for what purposes and under what terms and conditions. We call this Selective Disclosure.

Bespoke information sharing. Example: A charitable medical research foundation wants access an individual’s health records for research purposes. The individual says “Yes, you can have access to this information for free on the condition that a) it is not passed on to anybody else and b) it remains anonymous – so my name and address does not travel with it”.

‘Subscribe to me’ services. Example: an organisation subscribes to updates from specific fields (such as ‘home address’ or ‘contact details’’ within the individual’s Personal Data Store. Individuals can choose which organisations they wish to accept or reject as a subscriber. Once the subscription is in place every time the individual changes the relevant field in his data store, the subscribing organisation is automatically alerted to this fact.

Selective Disclosure is the subject of Information Sharing Agreements which protect the individual’s rights and provide a foundation for efficient, trust-based information sharing with organisations.

Data collection, data hand-backs and personal profiles

With a Personal Data Store it is very easy for individuals to keep a record of all their purchases, receipt by receipt. In addition, organisations that have collected data about the individual for their own purposes can pass this data back to the individual.

In this way, individuals can build a comprehensive picture of their activities across aspects of their lives such as ‘my money’, ‘my health’ and ‘my home’. Over time,  the data held by individuals in their personal data stores will grow to be richer, more rounded and comprehensive and more accurate than the data held by organisations in their traditional customer databases.

Verifications

Some personal information is conferred on the individual by a third party: say, your credit reference score, or your exam results. With Personal Data Stores, you can store this data on your PDS with the verification attached to it, so that when you share the information, the verification travels with it. This saves time, hassle and expense for both sides of the transaction.

Identity assurance and fraud protection When dealing with an individual, organisations need to be confident that the person they are dealing with is who they say they are. Usually, this assurance is given by an agreed ‘gold standard’ piece of identification such as a passport, or bank account. Personal Data Stores can help streamline these identity assurance processes a) by linking verifications to such data and b) by providing additional verifications such as, the fact that ‘I have received deliveries from Amazon at this address for the past five years’. The more such additional information, the harder it is for fraudsters to succeed.

Privacy management

Personal Data Stores transform the privacy debate by recognising privacy as a personal setting where the individual is empowered to choose what information he or she wishes to share with what other party. A person’s privacy settings can never be defined by the ‘privacy policy’ written by an organisation’s lawyers.

Managing preferences and permissions

Individuals can use their Personal Data Store as a sort of ‘universal My Account’, using it to specify contact preferences to organisations, turn communications on and off, while also deciding which organisations they want to deal with through their PDS.

Expressing interests and intentions

Individuals will be able to use their Personal Data Store as a vehicle for ‘reverse direct marketing’, announcing to suppliers what they are interested in buying, when – while maintaining their anonymity if they so wish.

Planning and implementing projects

Many life episodes such as getting married, buying a car, going on holiday or moving home involve gathering, sifting and sharing lots of information over a period of time. Personal Data Stores provide the ideal infrastructure for doing this efficiently and effectively.