$150 that's how much your name date of
birth address email and phone number
were worth roughly 10 years ago on a
black market today according to the
Financial Times your dater is worth less
than $1 see how cheap you are now why
well because today we're more open
towards sharing our personal information
than ever before and even if $1 is not
that much to lose being impersonated and
having for example a credit card or a
mortgage opened on our name or your
reputation being compromised will cost
you much much more we often hear that
big data is the world's newest natural
resource that needs to be mined like
gold and diamonds and I agree our data
can offer all kinds of personalized
services for the greater good but if big
data is a natural resource then our
personal data is it's refined currency
so why should we just freely give money
away
would you just throw your money out of
the window every day it all comes back
to control having control over who has
our data and how it's being used in
Switzerland where I live and in Europe
at large data privacy is a hot topic and
it has been for the past 50 years for
that reason around the decade ago the
European Commission funded a research
project called pry to develop a
cryptographic technology that would
enable Europeans to verify who they are
online without sharing their personal
information and let me repeat that
because it sounds like a paradox enable
people to verify who they
online without sharing their personal
information think about how many times
you log into different websites either
revealing your personal data directly or
letting them track your history and
habits one-day accounted for myself it
was like 25 logins to email social
network shopping that's a lot of times
we put ourselves out there and not only
online in the u.s. you often have to
show your driver's license or some kind
of proven identification to purchase
alcohol if you look under 21 and
actually in many places around the world
even people who are 30 or 40 years old
still have to show their ID well I guess
some people might see there's a
compliment I do but when you show your
driver's license to a cashier or
bartender think about how much private
data you're just giving away the fact is
you only need to prove that you're over
21 yet you're offering your full name
address not to mention the food date
month and year of your birth a data
thief stream but what if we could just
mask all this information and have our
ID card simply say she's older than 21
or the card is valid or simply yes with
cryptography we can we call it the zero
knowledge proof and just like it sounds
you are nothing about the details of
that person while still getting the
proof to address the request so think
about the famous Rubik's Cube how can I
prove to you that I can solve it without
revealing my technique so with Rubik's
Cube it's quite simple I just turn
around solve the cube and give it back
to you so now I just proved that I can
solve Rubik's Cube without revealing my
technique but what about my age how can
I prove to you that I'm old enough
without revealing my date of birth
well nowadays it's also quite simple
over the past couple of years we've been
developing web services that can be
easily used by the end users and service
providers to enable privacy-preserving
authentication so how would that work in
an online scenario well the first thing
we need is an attribute or identity
provider it can be a state authority
that issues ID cards or any other
organization that already has the data
and can certify it so for the zero
knowledge proof to work they will need
to issue you an electronic identity or
we call it a cryptographic credential
that can sit on your mobile phone PC or
even in the cloud and this is crucial
step because later when you use your
credential you can't lie about how old
you are or who you are and actually
different kinds of electronic identities
are available already more than 18
countries so next thing about this
service you want to access think about
an online consultation with the doctor
governmental social or tech services or
better think about the services you
don't want your children to access so
think about all kinds of services that
require some kind of verification
website that's an alcohol or adult
content or even a movie series so let's
say you'd like to watch a movie that's
rated R so you need to prove that you're
always seventeen to watch it so in the
past you would have to show your full
credit card or Foe ID or your kids could
just simply tick the check box on the
website without any verification but
with our technology you can just simply
log into the website similar like you
would do with a social network provider
but in a much more privacy friendly way
and then you'll be asked would you like
to prove to the movie service that you
older than 17 and if you confirm then
the crypto will do all the magic
transforming your full electronic
identity into a fresh a linkable proof
that only reveals that you are 17 years
old and nothing nothing else and it's
very important that your identity
provider does know about how you use
your credentials because all this
computation is done locally on your
device and now only you have controlled
which data leaves your device and where
it goes this is actually not only win
for the users but also for the service
providers because now the service
provider just doesn't know anything
about me I'll do other than I'm old
enough so if all this information gets
hacked from their service the hackers
who get nothing of value and this
actually saves service providers from a
potential PR nightmare not to mention
the financial damages according to Pony
Monde and independent security Institute
a damage from a lost or stolen record
containing personal confidential
information is around $150 which is fine
if you have like just five clients but
for a company with a hundred thousand
clients it's a 15 million penalty well
sounds like magic and seems complicated
well it was when it was just invented 15
years ago but if you months ago we've
changed this we put the code in the
cloud and on mobile devices and now the
application developers can just simply
copy and paste the code into their apps
and their privacy friendly in seconds so
what does this mean for the future well
obviously these data leak hacks and
identity tests that we read about
regularly will no longer be headline
news but now you might be thinking Maria
your technology sounds really great but
my data is already out there so I'm an
open book
but cryptography can change this
we can start sharing our data more
carefully with people and services and
putting less data - if your places will
reduce the risk actually we all change
our phones phone numbers and credit card
numbers even our habits and hobbies so
moving forward we can get back the full
control money is not everything and I
think that our personal data is much
more than just a currency with the
privacy-preserving technologies we can
get back the control and actually value
our personal data properly so let's make
the internet a safer place thank you