Data breaches, vulnerabilities, unlawful data collection and new European legislation are making headlines in this new day and age where there is now an enhanced awareness in the data economy business. A few years ago, not too many people were aware of how their personal data was processed and used to generate a revenue stream. Over time, more and more stories emerged about big companies that have taken advantage of customer’s data by sometimes bluntly selling it to the highest bidder. What most people didn’t realize is that the terms and conditions of using the services of these companies state they can use the data collected on the website in whichever way they want. This is becoming more and more of an issue because the big companies are getting bigger and bigger and the small high-potential businesses are being acquired by these big companies, making the big ones even bigger.
Using Facebook, Google and other social media channels for the search, display or sharing of personal information means compromising on having control over your own data as you are complying with their terms and conditions when using the platforms.
Human interference
Sources report Amazon is conducting an investigation into the reported selling of data by Chinese employees. These employees do not seem to be directly hired by Amazon, but they are hired through intermediaries. These employees allegedly sold customer information to merchants.
Just think about it for a minute, applying for a car insurance, filling in the paperwork to rent an apartment, trying to get approved for a mortgage at a bank, all these tasks will initiate human interaction and this human interaction is a way to get compromised. There is no way of knowing an employee of a company will handle your data with integrity. A lot of public information is available on malicious employees stealing customers personal information. Just click here, here, here, here or here.
This kind of news shows how easy it is to devalue a company’s reputation. With blockchain technology you can build an organic transparent tamper-free reputation, without third-party interference. The human factor will be taken out of the equation and data is being protected by an encryption technology.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have full control over your data? That you will get to say who is authorized to see your data and that you will be the sole beneficiary to profit of off your own data?
Covalent
Introducing Covalent and its COVA protocol. The Covalent team strives to solve the above-mentioned problems by leveraging the power of blockchain technology and building a fully decentralized computing platform and internet protocol, that is able to extract and analyze specific information from data without compromising privacy.
By using the COVA data package, owners can choose from an array of smart policies to be connected to their data which will execute the instructions on how to deal with that data. By implementing the smart policy, the data will follow its expected behavior. A user, for instance, can allow for the data to be shared with reputable, pre-approved merchants on the Covalent data marketplace. The user will be rewarded in COVA tokens for sharing that data. The data will always be sent encrypted and the merchant can never connect the data to its owner.
Covalent is planning to launch its public testnet in Q3/Q4 of 2018. The CovaVM and their programming language Centrifuge will also be released around the same time.
Further details on their roadmap will follow, token metrics and public token sale details are also expected to be announced soon.
A decentralized internet where there is no third-party interference will solve the human interference security issue. It also reduces costs and is privacy proof, no one will get access to the actual user data.
For an introduction into Covalent and the COVA protocol you can watch this video:
If you would like to know more about Covalent, you can check out my previous articles about the project:
https://blog.goodaudience.com/the-internet-evolution-and-the-creation-of-a-new-internet-ec961b593755
https://medium.com/@LindaCrypto/who-is-behind-the-covalent-project-team-and-investors-a361e07b134a
You can also visit Covalent’s official social media channels:
Website: http://covalent.ai/index.html
Telegram: https://t.me/covalentofficial
Twitter: https://twitter.com/covatoken
Blog: https://medium.com/@covatoken
Github: https://github.com/covalent-hq
Whitepaper: https://docsend.com/view/dvvb75n
Disclaimer: This article is not intended as investment advice. It is just my personal opinion about Covalent and its COVA protocol. You should always do your own research. Covalent rewards me for writing this article and supports me in ventilating my own personal opinion.
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