Privacy Protection for Your Data
From proving our address or identity to negotiating a payment or exchanging confidential files, our personal lives are filled with times where we need to work with others to exchange personal data. We also need to store all these files somewhere, ready for when they’re needed to help navigate our digital lives. This use case examines how Akord can provide a simple solution to helping you safely handle this part of your digital life.
Privacy Matters
From the Physical to the Digital
If someone followed you around your home collecting information on the type of person you are and what you were doing, you would be alarmed. To say the least. Our understanding of privacy and its importance in the physical world is easily understood.
This collective understanding on the importance of privacy in the digital world is lacking. We somehow don’t seem to care as much and, even despite increasing media attention on privacy infringements.
In our digital lives, we choose uncomfortable convenience over privacy and security. We send scans of our passport by email, uncomfortable with the idea we have lost control of this valuable data, but unsure of a better way of doing things. We receive confidential documents to our email and cross our fingers our account never gets compromised. We store files in the cloud and try to not dwell on the possibility they may get hacked.
Owning Who You Are and What You Do
In your daily digital life you leave a bewildering digital data trail behind you. In the name of providing you with a better user experience, your data is treated as fair game by companies who collect and store as much of it as possible. Many people don’t consider if, or even whether they should, truly own their data.
While many repeat the mantra “I have nothing to hide” to justify a lax approach to online privacy, we must understand this is no defense to exploitation and manipulation. Online privacy is as much about who you are, as it is about what you do. Once your personal data is leaked and exposed online, you’re exposed to identity fraud and any number of cyber attacks.
The Consequences of Handing Out Your Data
My primary takeaway after countless hours of research is that we give a lot of personal information to many different merchants and service providers that are vulnerable to hacking and social engineering. You should assume that over a long enough period of time, any data you give to third parties will be made public — whether or not it happens intentionally is irrelevant.
Unfortunately, most people don’t understand the seriousness of handing over their data and privacy until it comes back to bite them. The first three quarters of 2020 have seen 36 billion records exposed in data breaches, already twice the number leaked in 2019. The consequences for individuals are startling with 31% of data breach victims experiencing identity theft.
Your email account is particularly sensitive, as most people have a wide range of sensitive data stored in their account and the average person is using the same few passwords across all online services they use. It’s likely your email account has already been compromised, or “pwned”, and you can verify your email’s integrity using this online tool.
The good news is awareness of the importance of online privacy is rapidly increasing in many countries. Almost 50% of internet users in the US, France and Canada are increasingly concerned with online privacy in 2019 compared to a year ago.
Own Your Keys, Own Your Data
In the cryptocurrency world, the phrase “not your keys, not your coins” is in reference to whether you use a third party or download your own crypto wallet to manage your currency. By choosing a third party, you don’t truly own and control your cryptocurrency, as you must blindly trust that third party will never lose your currency from a hack or any other type of operational failure.
We take the same philosophy and approach and apply it to data, giving you the unique opportunity to truly own your data.
When you create an account with Akord, you also create your Akord wallet that holds the keys to encrypting all your data. This wallet is only ever decrypted locally when you enter your email and password, meaning you own those keys. Akord does not hold or have access to these keys. We cannot see your data, and neither would any cyber criminals if we were ever to be hacked.
Your Encrypted Hub
In Akord, all of your data is protected with end-to-end encryption with all files encrypted locally before they ever leave your device. Considering 91% of cloud services do not encrypt data at rest, which means your data isn’t protected if the cloud provider is hacked. That’s even more worrying when you learn 52% of companies use cloud services that have had user data stolen in a breach.
With Akord the next time you need to prove your identity or negotiate a payment with someone, you can create a data room for that purpose. Upload the necessary files to that data room, invite the people you’ll need to collaborate with, set permissions for those people, and request any data you need through the data room. If there’s an issue along the way, then you don’t need email or WhatsApp to resolve it, just post encrypted messages directly in the data room.
Akord acts as your central hub from which you can carry out any number of processes, exchanges and transactions with anyone you need to. Instead of using multiple services with opaque and questionable security practices, feel confident using Akord to exchange and work with sensitive data on your terms.
Get Started Today
Pricing during the Beta program is a one-off payment for unlimited data rooms and storage.