Prerequisite to the success of personal data services are the security of the data and the privacy of the individual. To that end the Open Society Foundation funded a study of the privacy implications of the Mydex community prototype which has just concluded.
It was carried out by a team under Simon Davies of the London School of Economics, who is also director of Privacy International. The team shared top-line findings in time for Mydex’ participation at the Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View 3-5 May.
Overall, the LSE team find the Mydex framework provides a robust contribution to privacy, but they warn of the need for vigilance: “The service adopts sound theoretical approaches from the many years of thinking, and has devised a system uniquely positioned to encourage widespread adoption. The Mydex model reduces threat from fragmented identity disclosure, but may require additional vigilance to mitigate possible increased threat at the user end.
“Without care, there is a risk that institutions using Mydex will follow the lead of banks by attempting to shift liability onto Mydex users.”
Mydex is grateful to the OSF and to the LSE team for the work carried out, will take careful heed of what has been learned as it moves to a live service, and will continue to seek critical and independent expert feedback on the privacy and security aspects of the new personal data ecosystem.
The final LSE privacy report will be posted here as soon as it is available.
