Personal and the World Economic Forum’s New Report


When I learned of the World Economic Forum’s first report on personal data in early 2011, I was surprised to see an organization comprised of Fortune 1000 companies highlight the many cutting-edge problems we were addressing at Personal. Their report went so far as to call personal data a “new economic asset class,” and made a bold assertion that individuals needed to be empowered with their data to create balance, fairness and stability in the new digital economy.

We were delighted to then be asked to participate in the Forum’s Rethinking Personal Data Working Group, which today released a new report, produced in collaboration with The Boston Consulting Group, entitled: “Rethinking Personal Data: Strengthening Trust.” You can see the Forum’s press release here, and our own here.

The report broadly defines personal data, including data that is directly or indirectly known about you and your family, friends, work, values and beliefs, location/GPS, car, home, finances, spending, browsing history, app usage, health, education – you name it. It further examines the growing instability that comes from a lack of trust and transparency in how personal data is captured and used by companies and governments, while highlighting benefits for all stakeholders, including people, if a better framework emerges that balances the competing needs and interests of all parties.

While startups are famous for “making sausage” – the idea that the reality is messy behind the scenes even when the outcome is good – I think it is fair to say we made some (very good) sausage over the last year. There were a wide range of passionate and thoughtful views on most every subject that touches personal data – ownership rights, consent, the primacy of the individual, the right to be forgotten, transparency, privacy, data security, national security, sovereignty, public safety, regulation, public health, political freedom, and, last but far from least, innovation and economic growth.

Many of the report’s recommendations focus on much needed improvements to the current model, where companies and governments are central. Others point to ways to explore new models that could give individuals a better seat at the table and that can create, through enhanced trust, even better outcomes for companies and governments willing to abide by new rules.

We were delighted to both participate in this important endeavor and to see Personal, along with companies like Dropbox, Reputation.com, Mydex and Qiy, be highlighted as an innovator working to empower people with their data. We are confident that the benefits will be magical for all involved as people are able to effectively manage and use this “new economic asset” across their lives.

Shane

By Shane Green in Power Shift

May 16, 2012

Personal for iPhone – How I’m Using Our Newest Mobile App


It’s here. Today marks the official launch of our iPhone app, which, along with our Android, web and mobile web apps, allows you to store, access and safely share your important information anytime, anywhere. As a co-founder at Personal, I thought you might enjoy learning about some of the ways I’m using Personal’s mobile apps every day at home and at the office.

While we all have ways to manage sensitive info like passwords and account numbers (Excel spreadsheets, password apps, Google Docs, sticky notes, emailing yourself, etc.), few are very secure and none allow for convenient yet safe sharing. Here are some of my favorite examples of how Personal comes in handy for this:

Co-managing logins & passwords

Nothing is less secure than emailing or texting a password, yet we do it all the time for accounts we manage with others. With Personal, my husband and I easily manage different accounts we both need. For example, I can grant access to our bank accounts, investment accounts and utilities online, while he manages our insurance, Amazon and Netflix accounts. Either of us can change a password for any of our more than 50 accounts and the other gets updated automatically. It works great for managing logins with co-workers as well, like those for the company Twitter or LinkedIn accounts or the constantly changing demo sites to which we all need access. Not surprisingly, the Logins & Passwords Gem is the most used Gem in Personal.

Finding and sharing the elusive Wi-Fi info

I don’t ever have to waste time chasing down the Wi-Fi login info for houseguests, friends who drop by or visitors to the office. Sharing the Wi-Fi Gem makes it easy for them and me. Best of all, I don’t have to worry about updating them if I ever change the router or my password once I’ve given them access. And it only takes a couple clicks to turn off access if I don’t want them to have it any more.

Keeping track of loyalty programs

Rental car, airline and hotel rewards program numbers are easy to find and share. My husband no longer has to call for my frequent flyer or hotel rewards program numbers when booking our travel, and booking travel at the office has never been easier, even for groups.

(Click to enlarge)

Another thing I really like about our mobile apps is the ability to access and modify data without a live network connection. Whether in the subway, on an airplane, travelling internationally or in a place with bad reception, this feature comes in handy.

If you’re an iPhone user, we hope you’re as excited as we are to experience the magic of on-the-go access to your personal data. Download Personal for iOS today and let us know what you think by leaving a comment below – or better yet, a review in the App Store.

You can also download the Android app from Google Play.

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Jennifer

By Jennifer O'Keefe in Product

May 7, 2012

A Legal Update


If you know anything about Personal, you know that the Owner Data Agreement is the foundational document for how we operate. It’s the legally binding contract between you and Personal that says you own your data that you choose to store and manage in your data vault – not us or anyone you share with on Personal. It’s the roadmap for our privacy- and security-by-design platform that is dedicated to protecting the individual.

In addition to the Owner Data Agreement, we have two other documents necessary for any online or mobile company – our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. We posted some changes to them today; nothing has changed in the Owner Data Agreement. Perhaps not exactly world-shaking news, but we believe in sharing these kinds of developments. In the future, we’ll post an archive of them so you can see for yourself how they’ve evolved.

Terms of Use: The primary changes were to add policies for copyright infringement takedown and handling unsolicited business idea submissions and inquiries.

Privacy Policy: We made language about our service consistent with the updated Terms, and added a new FAQ addressing the California “Shine the Light” law, which requires companies to provide transparency in how they share your data. We exceed it at Personal because your data in your vault is yours, and we can’t do anything with it without your explicit permission. While we view these changes as important enough to make, we don’t view them as material.

If you have any questions about these changes or thoughts for improvements, please leave us a comment below or submit your request to privacy@personal.com.

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Josh

By Josh Galper in Inside Personal

May 4, 2012

10 Reasons to Bring Your Startup to a Ropes Course


Last week, our DC office headed to Go Ape in Rockville, MD for an afternoon of team-building, tree-climbing and zip-lining. While it’s safe to say everyone had different expectations going into the day, by the end, we all agreed that it was a valuable experience – especially for a busy, always-connected startup like our own.

If you’re looking for inspiration for your team’s next outing, here are 10 reasons to bring your startup to a ropes course:

1. You’ll work through challenges and overcome obstacles with colleagues that you might not directly collaborate with on a daily basis.

2. You’ll have the opportunity to see your CEO in a new light.

3. By dividing into teams, you’ll be able to inject a healthy dose of competition into your aerial activities.

4.  At 40 feet in the air, answering emails and being on call becomes somewhat less of a priority, thus allowing everyone to take a mini (and much-deserved) vacation from work.

5. The likelihood of overhearing quotes such as “I’ve been laughing so hard, my face hurts!” increases exponentially.

6. You’ll have a great incentive to dust off those workout shoes or boots that you tend to forget about during your busy weeks.

7. You’ll discover muscle groups that you rarely use at your desk or the office ping pong table.

8. You’ll have a chance to challenge yourself and step outside of your own comfort zone.

9. If you find that you’re 100% at ease in the trees, you’ll be in a great position to help and spend quality one-on-one time with someone who isn’t.

10. By the end of the day, you might even end up with enough footage to produce an almost-viral video.

Theresa

By Theresa Dold in Inside Personal

April 25, 2012

Highlights from Data Transparency Weekend


Now that the Personal team has caught up (somewhat) on sleep after an exciting few days at the first-ever Wall Street Journal Data Transparency Weekend, we wanted to share a handful of highlights and takeaways from our point of view as both a participant and a sponsor.

First of all, our hats go off to all of the organizers, track leaders and speakers who made this weekend one to remember: Julia Angwin, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Allen Gunn, Alessandro Acquisti, Sid Stamm, Daniel Weitzner, Andrew McLaughlin, Dan Kaminsky, Ashkan Soltani, Brian Kennish and Jacob Appelbaum. We were impressed with how well-organized, full of camaraderie and downright awesome the event proved to be from the very beginning.

What truly made the event special, of course, were the participants we met and the many projects that came out of it. While all of them were great, here are a few highlights in no particular order:

MobileScope

Voted the “Ready for Primetime” Winner, MobileScope was developed by David Campbell, Aldo Cortesi, Ashkan Soltani and Pascal Van Hecke to provide all desktop and mobile users with “privacy enhancing features via an intercepting proxy in the cloud.” Such features include Collusion, Do Not Track, Certificate Pinning, AdBlock and visualization of your personal data usage. This is the first implementation that specifically caters to non-jailbroken mobile devices.

Make Myself Clear

Our friends at Ghostery joined forces with a few others to build a web app that scans social networks for sensitive information – e.g. references to drugs and alcohol, health issues, etc. – about users. As employers become increasingly insistent on investigating our digital lives, even going so far as to demand job applicants’ Facebook passwords, Make Myself Clear gives us the tools to self-audit and preview the information that a company with access to our social profiles might see.

CensorSweeper

Dan Kaminsky, Joe Geffen and Michael Tiffany teamed up to build a Web app based on the premise that there should be a simple way for everyone (read: a way that doesn’t require people to install code) to visit a website and figure out what has been censored. The first version of the app is live and ready for you to try.

What did the Personal team build?

As far as our own project, Zogger, goes: it’s a Firefox extension that, once enabled, stores data about the sites you visit and gives you a quantified-self analytics view to help you better understand where you go and what data you give up in the process. While it’s still a work-in-progress, you can download the extension and give Zogger a try today.

If you’re a developer, we invite you to fork our extension and build on it.

We are proud to have sponsored this forward-thinking and collaborative event and are already looking forward to continuing the fight for privacy, transparency and, yes, freedom at next year’s Data Transparency Weekend.

Tarik

By Tarik Kurspahic in Power Shift

April 17, 2012