What if companies gave me control of my data?

You’re not on your own here. I agree with what you are saying. I don’t want my personal data in the hands of yet another company (and their subcontractors). Personal data is valuable and it is so easy to misuse either deliberately or accidentally. If the authorities want to give more power to consumers then it must involve the consumers controlling their own data and not handing it over to others. Another option would be to force companies to present the information they already hold on us in a clear way and then there would be no “need” for proposals like “midata” at all.

I was going to second your motion, Malcolm. Too late. Mark’s already got there. So I’ll third it.

midata is a practical problem. You can’t assess it without knowing how it works. Perhaps Which? approached it a bit too theoretically when they compiled their response to the BIS consultation, http://www.which.co.uk/documents/pdf/which_response_bis_consumer_access_to_data_sep12-299211.pdf

Their response to Q3, for example, notes that the privacy issues are very serious. How can the security problems behind those issues be solved? Which? take three pages to answer that at Q9. Have all the safety measures prescribed there been achieved? In practice, no. The theoretical answer that Which? give to Q1 – yes, Which? do agree with the principles of midata – is therefore at least mitigated, if not completely undermined.

Q6 asks what new services could be offered by midata, presumably services which consumers would find useful and which would empower them. Which? has no comment to make. Not much point, surely, advocating midata if the benefits can’t be named.

In what form should data be given by suppliers to consumers (Q12)? That’s an important practical matter but Which? aren’t sure of the answer. So can they be sure of the (unnameable) benefits being achieved in practice?

Which? have no comment to make about the costs likely to be incurred by midata (Q14) except to say that the suppliers shouldn’t charge consumers (Q15). How does that work? Which sugar daddy, in practice, is going to pay the (unknown) costs, if not the consumer?

QQ17-21 elicit two pages of responses from Which?, prescribing accreditation and regulation, all in addition to the regulation we already have, all of which would cost money (no comment) and all in pursuit of the benefits of midata (no comment).

Which just leaves Q22, in answer to which Which? succinctly restate the risks of midata, which are well known, unlike the benefits, which we still don’t.

Completely up to them, of course, but Which? may care to take the opportunity to revisit their response to the midata consultation.

@ Malcolm R Data protection is a very significant focus of the midata programme. Increasing numbers of significant retailers are making transaction data available to customers in machine readable format, though they are still comparatively few in number. So this programme provides an early opportunity for the private sector (including consumer groups and independent) to work with the UK public sector to both support and encourage that trend and help ensure the various operational risks are proportionately addressed. Why don’t you want everyone to work together in this way? Would you prefer the adversarial style of public intervention long after problems arise, as in the banking sector?

@ David Moss Numerous private and public sector trends appear to be travelling in a similar direction, including the few you mention, but that doesn’t mean they are directly linked or will be coherent in helping to ensure that common operational risks are addressed. If anything you’re giving government departments too much credit for being joined up, whereas they need to be put under pressure to work better and more efficiently together (ideally to spend less in the process of achieving more).

It’s true that the voluntary midata programme might not necessarily “cause” additional suppliers to release transaction data to their customers in machine readable format – that trend began and will continue independently. But resolving some of the issues should help guide their approach and reduce project time/cost. This would bring forward the benefit consumers, as well as ensure that the public sector is proactively supportive, rather than unhelpfully reactive, in helping to control common operational risks.

I certainly don’t agree that we have effective switching applications for energy, current accounts or mobile phone packages, or that there is even enough genuine choice for consumers or micro-enterprises. In fact, there is extensive evidence to the contrary. A dazzling array of packages and pricing designed to deliver fantastic profits for the suppliers at customers’ expense is hardly genuine choice. But I’m sure that the big energy providers, banks and telcos will be as delighted by your perception on this front, as they will be with your assertion that only suppliers and fraudsters could be empowered by making transaction data available to customers.

Simon

On this occasion, you underestimate Whitehall. You may not have realised the connection between BIS’s midata and GDS’s Identity Assurance Programme but Whitehall do. You can’t run midata without identity assurance. The same goes for DWP’s Universal Credit. These aren’t independent initiatives which some fruitcake called Moss is battily linking. They’re the same initiative.

We already have regulators in the financial, energy and telecommunications markets, not to mention retail. If they can’t oversee these markets, if they can’t ensure that tariffs are comprehensible and that consumers can see the data they need to see, if they can’t be “proactively supportive”, why do you imagine that midata will be able to?

The big suppliers already release transaction data in the form of bank statements, electricity bills, etc … You know that. What I’m saying is that storing that data for tens of millions of people on servers in the cloud which could be anywhere in the world, in or out of the UK’s jurisdiction, under the more or less distant control of Mydex or whoever, relying on security tools and procedures which are demonstrated every day to be liable to breakdown would not be wise even if someone could say what is the benefit of midata but, as it is, no-one can and it is therefore incomprehensibly and wantonly irresponsible for anyone to suggest that midata is a good idea.

As for large suppliers, let’s let our hair down for a moment and do a bit of speculation.

62 million or so people in the UK. Over 33 million of them are monthly users of Facebook. A Facebook account is pretty well a PDS. Even more of them use the web. Google will have the browsing history of most of them and GMail/Youtube/Google+ accounts for many – again, that amounts to PDSs for millions of us. That’s where identity assurance is heading if GDS have their way and so that’s where midata is heading, too – forget little young Mydex.

midata is headed straight into the arms of big, quasi-monopolistic suppliers. Amazon (cloud computing), PayPal (payments), Google and Facebook for PDSs. They will all four of them be “delighted with your perception on this front”, as you put it. The rest of us won’t. Or rather wouldn’t. This is just speculation after all.

It is disappointing how few comments have been made but if the risks were explained I think there would be overwhelming support for our concerns.

‘Luddite’ originally referred to those who went round smashing modern machinery. Let’s hope it does not come to that, but I have seen nothing to convince me that personal data will be held and used responsibly. Every time my phone number rings and the number is withheld, or I get a call from one of these confounded market research companies I think it’s time to put a stop to data use/misuse.

Wow wavechange, something we agree on. It is OUR data not theirs and so it is up to each individual to secure their own.

It would be really useful if individual companies doing cold calling had to provide a unique reference number and name when they contact anyone. That would then allow the recipient to make an application to remove such data from the source and contactor – but that would require some authority to impose such capability!

Also in an earlier post you indicated that you do not like people who will not take NO for an answer (what about NO I don’t want to be forced to use Metric!)

David

I look forward to finding more we can agree on. 🙂

Spam is another example of misuse of information. I have to put email addresses on my website in the form of images to prevent them being harvested and used to deliver spam. Maybe some people do want the benefits of midata, but let them opt in and let the rest of us get on with our lives.

Of course we accept that all are working on data security. There have been so many examples in the past of leaky data, from bodies including HMG that no doubt were equally concerned to provide security, that there is little confidence that this time it will be totally foolproof. If institutions such as USA defence can be hacked into then we will take a lot of convincing that this time it will be different.

Lawyers involvement suggest penalties for infringement – too late then. Civil rights activists implies the wish to protect, not the means.

I would happily hold the useful data under my own control. At present I know there is sensitive data of mine in data bases; I know some of that has been mislaid by oner or more institutions. However, as I understand it, the proposal is to collect my data into one place? That worries me immensely if that is the case.

There have still not been, as far as I can see, satisfactory answers to why we (many of us) need third party advice for energy, telecoms, banking and credit cards. Firstly. like many, I am more than capable of sorting these providers out for myself. Secondly – who are these totally independent third parties who will survey the whole market impartially and provide others with their best solutions? And to automatically switch for you? They don’t necessarily know when your circumstances change in a way that would affect your choice.

I think there needs to be much more clarity about exactly what and how and when midata will provide benefits for the sole benefit of consumers and when it will benefit profit-making. organisations.

http://www.dmossesq.com/2013/01/midata-simple-question-posed-by-which.html