We live in an age of data being shared with third parties. All too often though we read about data breaches being carried out by companies who share personal information without the consent of the consumer or without their knowledge.

A blockchain startup by the name of “Tide” or Tide Foundation wants to change consumers access to their data by giving them full control over personal data on their blockchain by enabling them to manage their own encryption keys.

Who Is Tide?

Tide is a not-for-profit, community-driven foundation whose vision is to offer control and remuneration for the user’s personal information as well for their attention. Their website mandate states that they are there to ensure that personal data is fully secure and that the proper value for it is attributed.

Tide opened their doors three years ago in Sydney, Australia and went on to develop the Tide Protocol (more on this later) which is the core technology in its blockchain data privacy solution, just two years ago.

In a nutshell, the startup wants to create an ecosystem wherein users can sell their personal information in an open marketplace which the company is said to announcing today.

Tide co-founder Issac Elkenave stated:

“The overall concept is that when a consumer engages with a business and provides that business with personally identifiable information, the Tide Protocol encrypts that information and provides the consumer with the only key to decrypt it.”

Tide’s Marketplace in Nutshell:

When the consumer has full control over their personal data, companies are unable to share this information with third parties without first gaining permission from the consumer. Tide’s marketplace will provide a platform for data-hungry companies, vendors who manage the data and lastly, the consumers who completely own the data in order to leverage fair market values in order to gain access to it.

Furthermore, companies who purchase this data will have the piece of mind knowing that the info they are buying is more valuable due to it being accurate and being delivered with the full knowledge and consent of the consumer selling it.

Tide Protocol Protects From Data Breaches:

Say there is a massive data data breach such as the likes of Equifax or Marriott, if consumers were backed by Tide’s protocol, the malicious hackers would not have been able to utilise the PII in the breached databases as the consumers would have full control of their keys to decrypt it which of course would render the data useless to the hackers.

In a nutshell, the Tide protocol operates in the same fashion as a business blockchain:

“Tide Protocol uses forked EOS nodes, smart contracts and additional proprietary decentralized layers to manage permissioned access to encrypted consumer data stored by businesses (vendors),” explained the startup in a statement.

With regards to the consumer controlling their encryption keys, Tide stated that it has created a breakthrough patented technology which will make the process of managing keys idiot proof, essentially creating a process so easy, one that passes what Tide has dubbed the “Grandpa Test.”

Yuval Hertzog, company co-founder explains:

“We have developed a layer, a decentralized way to dumb down blockchain to a ubiquitous user experience on the web.

Hertzog went on to explain that the idea is to simplify the complexities of key management systems found with that of your typical kind of web experience.

Furthermore, Elnekave also stated that Tide’s offering complies with the GDPR, which are of course the strict EU privacy regulation laws which came into effect just last year which includes a users “right to be forgotten”. This is because the Tide protocol gives users full control over their encryption keys meaning the user only needs to stop providing access to any business, by trashing the encryption key and blocking access.

Tide’s mantra is that data ownership should be in the hands of the consumer as a fundamental human right. We’re inclined to agree.