WATCH: Entrepreneur’s bid to help Jersey take back control

Monday 03 February 2020

A tech entrepreneur is giving islanders free access to a groundbreaking new app enabling them to ‘revoke’ their personal details from the darkest corners of the web in a bid to make Jersey the safest place for data in the world, Express can reveal.

Starting later this month, Atam ID Technologies will be offering its new app – ‘Revoke’ – for free to Jersey residents.

Once signed up, the app notifies users of where their data is held and, crucially, which bits have been involved in previous data breaches, and potentially traded and sold on the 'dark web' – a hidden network often used for criminal purposes.

Users can then decide which bits of information they want to remove.

Video: Users react to reports about their data put together using Revoke.

The rationale behind the app, CEO Gus Fraser told Express, is a belief that everyone – no matter their background – is at risk of having their data used for 'dark' purposes.

On a simple level, it could lead to a bombardment of unsolicited online ads; on a more worrying one, it could mean third parties applying for loans or credit cards in another's name or hacking into company systems.

"When people don't read terms and conditions, don't read privacy policies, it means they don't know what's happening with their personal data, and then what's going to happen is they're leaving themselves at risk, they don't realise that people could more easily take out credit cards, even loans in their name," Gus explained.

The venture has global ambitions, but Gus said Revoke is decided to take the opportunity to take advantage of Jersey as a 'Digital Sandbox' to help "refine what we think will be a very useful product to help everybody take back control of our personal data".

Once that fine-tuning has happened, they'll be looking towards Europe, as well as Brazil, which has data protection coming into force at the end of 2020, and California, whose own Consumer Privacy Act came into force on 1 January.

In fact, Gus was in California in November, and said he has been speaking to specialist including Cambridge Analytica whistleblower and close acquaintance Brittany Kaiser about strategy for tackling the jurisdiction.

The news of the launch in Jersey comes just as Data Protection Week comes to an end.

During the week, Gus hosted a special screening of The Great Hack – a film which documents the Cambridge Analytica affair – which included a pre-recorded Q&A with Brittany Kaiser, who went on to found Own Your Data, which helps train people in digital literacy.

Gus added that the Jersey Office of the Information Commissioner, which monitors and decides on sanctions relating to data breaches, has been "really excited" about the opportunity offered by Revoke to help the public get to grips with cybersecurity – something he says the JOIC has found difficult.

"Even during Data Protection Week, it's data protection officers attending events – they have a legal obligation to fulfil these duties, whereas consumers don't... We're going to be spending a lot of effort trying to educate consumers to take better care of their personal data."

Thanks Tim, pic from the front row there! And thanks again @OwnYourDataNow Great insights and answers to so many questions from @JerseyOic@digitaljersey and more! #privacy #dataprotection #GDPR #CCPA https://t.co/w8zs7WVISd

— Gus Fraser (@gusfraser) January 30, 2020

Pictured: Gus and Brittany Kaiser during the Data Protection Week Q&A.

According to Gus, awareness that anyone can be at risk – "it's not just scaremongering" – is one of the key hurdles to bettering Jersey people's 'Digital IQ'.

"People think, 'Why me? It's not going to happen to me. Why would people be interested in my data?' and it sometimes takes a trigger event for people to realise actually they should have taken better care, but at that stage it's too late."

For those not convinced, Gus provides the example of a seemingly innocuous weather app:

"Most people use a weather app - who’s paying for that service, by the way? You’re not paying for it – someone is. They don’t do the app for free. They take all that data and they’re selling all the data to data aggregators that use that to paint a picture of you to sell other services and these people get hacked as well. So quite often I’ve been the subject of a breach where I don’t even know the company that’s hoarding my data because I never gave them explicit permission."

He continued: "You might think it needs your location, but it only needs your location when you need to find out the weather where you are. Unless you're moving countries all the time, just put the country in.

"The weather app probably doesn't even have the weather data in it – it's just the middle man between you and the weather supplier – and yet they're hoarding every step that you make. I'm talking about going from the front door to the office and back again. There's only one person in the world that does that, and that's me.

"From that data, they can work out it's me, where I go, and they'll be hoarding all this data and selling it. That invasion of privacy is a trade-off I'm not willing to take, but many people wouldn't think. They wouldn't have read the policies, they wouldn't have checked the settings."

And online quizzes can be equally hazardous.

"People used to answer quizzes about what kind of personality they are – what they're doing is creating data sets for third parties to then target them, and sometimes influence votes.

"The Great Hack story is that they managed to convince people to answer all these surveys that seemed innocuous, but really they were profiling you to see if they could influence you with different stories and influence your vote. If people were on the fence, they'd influence a certain way. If they couldn't influence you, they would try and convince you not to vote.

"This is all through the naivety of many people who didn't realise the information they were sharing was going to be used against them."

Of course, changing internet users' habits through education is a goal that will take time to solidify.

"There are not many people trying to address the problem from the consumer side of things – education solutions are very long-term, but what are you going to do now?"

That's where Revoke comes in – "[it's about] being able to easily exercise your data protection rights and retrieve your data from a source at the touch of a button. It's something that feels powerful," Gus stated.

"We want to support [cybersecurity] legislation with technology that helps people take control."

The ultimate ambition, Gus says, is creating a "better protected island and being able to legitimately claim... that we’re the best protected jurisdiction in the world."

READ MORE...

IN-DEPTH: Locking down your data - how Jersey could become the safest place for data in the world