The solution for your online privacy?

7

October

2018

No ratings yet.

The solution for your online privacy?
Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the internet, director at the world wide web consortium and professor at MIT has an Idea to revolutionize the internet. His plan is to give power over personal data back to the customer. Nowadays, the digital giants of this world still control all your data, but that is not how Tim Berners-Lee had originally envisioned the internet. The timing for releasing his new idea to the world was impeccable. Facebook just released a day earlier that data had been breached of nearly 50 million customers.

In a blog post on the website Medium he clarified his idea. Tim Berners-Lee wants to give the customer power over its own data again. To reach this goal he has created Solid which is a new open-source technology that has decentralization and control as central principles. Solid is a platform based on the existing web. On this platform users will be able to decide which apps can use what of your personal data. This works by putting all your personal data in some kind of pod. Customers will be able to store their pod personally or at a specialized service provider. Users will be able to select which kind of data will be accessible by what kind of people. When an app wants to make use of your own data they will have to make a special request to your pod. This will be in the interests of customers as no website, app or social network will own any of your personal data anymore.

According to Tim Berners-Lee this technology will unleash incredible opportunities for commerce and it will empower developers to build trusted, innovative and beneficial applications. For the first Solid apps customers will need to wait about a year.

Do you think this idea will revolutionize the way we store data, and will this undermine the strategy of the current digital giants?

Sources:

Tim Berners-Lee launched his vision for an alternative web, and his timing was impeccable


View at Medium.com
http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20181001_03799969

Please rate this

Everything can be hacked

12

September

2018

4.5/5 (2)

Bruce Schneier, an American cryptographer and computer security professional, just published an eye-opening book, it is called Click here to kill everybody. Here he warns about our lack of digital security and what the consequences might be if we do not address these problems.
In 2017 8,4 billion devices were connected to the internet, according to predictions this number will rise to 20 or even 75 billion devices in 2020. As the title of this book already suggests this can cause huge problems because most of these devices have poor security systems. Cyberattacks are getting more common and have bigger consequences. In 2017, one of the biggest cyberattacks took place through the use of the Wannacry ransomware. It infected huge businesses like the NHS, FedEx, Deutsche Bahn and Renault.
Schneier claims that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Nowadays a lot of devices are becoming connected to the internet, it is not only computers anymore that can get hacked. A car for example used to be pure mechanical, now it has partially become a computer as well. In 2015, researchers already showed that cars can get hacked as well. They could take over control of your car from miles away. If people with bad intentions obtain this technology it could have extreme consequences. Just today researchers from the KU Leuven showed it was quite easy to clone a Tesla key. It made use of very outdated and unsafe cryptography, to clone it they did not even need complex equipment.
According to Schneier the reason behind the lack of safety is that computer manufacturers want to launch their new models too fast. Only after these computers are on the market do they try to fix these holes in their security. He also puts part of the blame with the creators of the internet. Schneier claims that the foundations of the internet have always been unsafe.
The solution that Schneier offers is that governments need to put more regulations on manufacturers. He pleads that these companies need to provide their products with security labels so that consumers know what they buy.

Please rate this