Tide Foundation gives consumers full control of personal data on blockchain
It seems that on a regular basis, we hear about massive data breaches or companies sharing highly personal information with third parties without a consumer’s permission or knowledge. Tide Foundation wants to change that by giving consumers complete control over their personal data on the blockchain by allowing them to manage their own encryption keys.
The startup wants to take that notion a step further by giving users the ability to sell that personal information in an open marketplace that the company is announcing today.
“The overall concept is that when a consumer engages with a business and provides that business with personally identifiable information, the Tide Protocol encrypts that information and provides the consumer with the only key to decrypt it,” Tide co-founder Issac Elnekave told TechCrunch.
With full control over their data, companies could not transfer any information to a third party without the consumer granting permission first. The marketplace provides a way for companies that need data, the vendors that manage that data and the consumers who ultimately own the data to negotiate a fair market value for access to it. What’s more, the companies buying the data know that they are getting much more valuable and accurate information, delivered with the full knowledge of the consumer.