Privacy in eCommerce — Part 3

How is Particl Keeping Your Data Safe and Identity Private?

In parts one and two of this series, we explored how the incumbent giants of eCommerce are systematically exploiting your data as both a buyer and a vendor.

The eBays, Amazons, and PayPals of the world know everything there is to know about you from a data standpoint. Who you are, what you buy, what you might buy. In fact, theyʼre so good at knowing you that todayʼs algorithms can accurately market products to you that you previously had no intention of buying. Or maybe is it that you didn’t really want anyone to know you needed that product in the first place?

We all remember that classic story about Target figuring out a teen girl was pregnant before her own family did. That was back in 2012, mind you. The effectiveness of data analysis techniques have come a long way since then!

They accomplish this through the placement of the right message in the right moment, and the sum of your activity on their platforms is the fuel needed to power incredibly accurate marketing machines.

In essence, your data is a 21st-century oil that is being fracked day and night. Without your awareness (or opt-in), most of the apps and platforms you engage with are refining your crude data for their own benefit. What do you receive in return for being completely exposed? In the current paradigm, the answer is nothing.

You spend your time and money, and in turn, your personal data is flipped into value for someone else. While this is currently the norm, a swell in the opposite direction is beginning to generate a current.

What does the opposite direction look like? Itʼs powered by humble decentralized platforms that enable you to retain all of your information privately. That includes every bit of data connected with the platform, no matter how big or small. For vendors, private decentralized platforms completely protect all sales information and ensure that only the two parties involved can see the data.

The purpose of our effort to build the worldʼs first private eCommerce paradigm is simple. We want to see people prosper, not monopolies armed with faceless algorithms. However, without the right tools, combating the loss of our sensitive data is extremely difficult.

Particlʼs mission is to build those tools, and weʼd like to share exactly how weʼre doing it.

Making Privacy Possible With Particl Open Marketplace

In todayʼs world, privacy is often equivocated with opting into or out of certain features. Donʼt want an app tracking your every move? Youʼll need to opt out. Concerned about your cookies being used to target you for advertising? Well, if you want to use the full range of features available on the website youʼre visiting, youʼll have to opt into the use of cookies.

The result is often that even though youʼre given the appearance of choice, you donʼt have one. After all, some applications, websites, and services don’t even leave you with much choice. You either agree to the entire privacy policy, or just don’t use the platform and find an alternative. This becomes highly problematic when there’s no solid alternative to use.

Particl’s Open Marketplace is a decentralized marketplace built on a fundamental and inalienable principle of privacy. In fact, privacy on the marketplace is so essential that there is no opting in or out at all —it is private by default.

Once youʼre using Particl, thereʼs nothing left to do — no tips or tricks necessary, no wondering if your data is going to end up in some corner of the dark web later on for identity thefts and fraudsters to play with. We achieve this by baking the latest privacy and peer-to-peer technologies available into Particl at the protocol level. For us, there is no alternative to a world in which people control the data that belongs to each of them individually.

Privacy and security are in our DNA — every line of code we write is with these fundamentals in place. Suffice to say; when it comes to privacy, weʼre all in.

While these ideas sound fantastic on a grandiose philosophical level, what really matters is that weʼre backing them up with a tangible privacy platform built upon principled code.

Particlʼs peer to peer marketplace makes both your buying and selling experience ironclad in privacy using the following fundamentals.

Decentralization

Centralized marketplaces send all buyer and seller data through a trusted intermediary. This intermediary can then, in turn, harvest your data and ship it downriver to other third parties like data miners and analysts who shape that data up for advertisers. The obvious example of such practices is the highly talked about Facebook-Campbridge Analytica scandal that unfolded in 2016.

In contrast, Particl is entirely decentralized, meaning your information is never routed through a third party of any kind. Even better: no identifiable information is being generated at all!

Instead, Particlʼs marketplace relies on an incredibly secure blockchain-based peer-to-peer network. When transactions are done in an entirely decentralized manner, no data is shared with anyone in the first place because it simply doesn’t exist. Without being shared or even generated, it canʼt be compromised.

Currency Transactions

Keeping your transactions private is of the utmost importance. Weʼve gone to great lengths to ensure that not only are your transactions private but that theyʼre also untraceable as well. With the recent rise of blockchain analysis, the value of this feature makes itself readily apparent.

To protect your transactions by making them private by default, weʼve modified both CT and RingCT privacy protocols to work with our Bitcoin codebase-built platform. Under normal circumstances, RingCTʼs rangeproofs are set to 32bits, which is private, but not private enough by our standards. So, we upgraded the protocolʼs rangeproofs to 64bits and have had academic reviews and code audits to validate the results. In a high stakes game involving your data, we donʼt believe in taking shortcuts.

No Metadata

When you upload details like pictures to your Particl Open Marketplace listing, you can rest easy knowing that the platform automatically removes all associated metadata. Typically, metadata that is left behind can reveal things like GPS location and other information you donʼt want in the wrong hands.

Log onto the platform and upload like thereʼs no tomorrow — Particl has your back.

No IP Tracking

IP tracking is a major concern across platforms of all stripes — except Particl. Particl Open Marketplace is Tor-compatible, so you can easily anonymize your IP address in a permanent and failsafe manner. Because default Tor integrations can be pretty unsafe due to how updates need to be pushed at the client level, we’ve opted to make it optional at first until we work in a secure implementation.

Blinded Escrow

Settling a dispute on platforms like PayPal, Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay is almost always a hassle. Buyers and sellers find that, regardless of how right they are in a transaction dispute, they still find themselves on the wrong side of resolution center judgments.

While this makes for frustratingly hilarious threads in eBay and PayPal community forums, we think the time to upend the situation is now. Particl Open Marketplace features blinded escrow, a smart-contract based escrow system that works directly between two parties and skips the resolution center altogether.

All buyer/seller communications, tracking numbers, transacted items, and buyer information are therefore private and accessible only by the two parties involved. No more giving your data away to some moderator or escrow agent working for a marketplace!

Encrypted Communications

Want to know how serious we are about keeping your communications private on Particl? Weʼve implemented military-grade encryption technology that ensures your communications enjoy the same protections that classified information does. While not available on Particlʼs first mainnet release, encrypted communications will go live at some point during our Beta stage of development.

Private Markets

Have a limited release product for a specialized clientele? Particl Open Marketplace makes it easy for you, as a vendor, to create an invite-only marketplace for your products. Private markets are custom markets created by the community. The products listed in these markets do not appear on the public interface of the Open Marketplace, providing yet another layer of privacy and security to those looking for it.

Rest assured, listings posted on the public interface of the marketplace have the same underlying privacy protocols protecting your data. Listings posted in private markets simply benefit from an additional layer of privacy due to “obscurity”. If you don’t have the access code to a specific market, you cannot even know what kind of products are listed on there.

The Way Forward

At the DNA level, Particl is a dynamic platform that is inseparable from user-centric privacy protection. As technology advances, so too do threats to privacy, which is why we remain on high alert and are continually evolving our approach through meticulous and active research and development.

Our commitment is to your anonymity, and as such, weʼre perpetually working behind the scenes to make Particlʼs great feature set even better and more private. By listening to our community and vigilantly watching over your privacy rights, we will cement our position as the best and most private decentralized peer-to-peer marketplace available on the web.