Like me, perhaps you have to come to feel that privacy online is nearly impossible. Personal control of one’s information is, at best, difficult to achieve and often not in the realm of users who are not very tech-savvy. We’re not the only ones who feel that way. Even Tim Berners-Lee, the man widely accredited with the creation of the web, acknowledges that the original intentions of his invention have been subverted and it has turned into something dystopian. In an effort to make something better, that accounts for the rights of the individual over those of Big Tech, he’s created a startup, called Inrupt, that’s been making news headlines.
- Who owns the web’s data? The fightback against Big Tech’s feudal lords has begun [The Economist] ” Inrupt, for instance, is working with the government of Flanders, a region of Belgium, to give every citizen a “pod” to store personal data. It hopes private firms will build user-friendly apps around the data, with people’s consent, says John Bruce, its co-founder. The better the apps, the more eager people will be to furnish it with their data.”
- He created the Web. Now he’s out to remake the digital world [NY Times] “Companies could gain access to a person’s data, with permission, through a secure link for a specific task like processing a loan application or delivering a personalized ad. They could link to and use personal information selectively, but not store it.”
- We Need to Change How We Share Our Personal Data Online in the Age of COVID-19 [TIME] “COVID-19 underscores how urgently we need a new approach to organizing and sharing personal data. You only have to look at the limited scope and the widespread adoption challenges of the pandemic apps offered by various tech companies and governments.”
- Tim Berners Lee’s startup Inrupt releases Solid privacy platform for enterprises [TechCrunch] “The difference between this and more conventional web or phone apps is that it is up to the user who can access this information and the application owner has to ask the user for permission and the user has to explicitly grant it and under what conditions.”
From the Ohio Web Library:
- Web Founder Launches Inrupt to Improve Internet Privacy. (Kerner, S. M. (2018). Web Founder Launches Inrupt to Improve Internet Privacy. EWeek, 1–2.)
- Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid data-privacy project enters the real world. (Meyer, D. (2020). Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid data-privacy project enters the real world. Fortune.Com, N.PAG.)
- Web creator on a mission to solve data privacy woes (Nasir, S. (2018, October 16). Web creator on a mission to solve data privacy woes. Khaleej Times (7/2008 to 4/2009).)
