Personal data is as hot as nuclear waste!

The above is a statement of Cory Doctorow (1) made in 2008 already in an article published in The Guardian (2). He continued : "We should treat personal electronic data with the same care and respect as weapons-grade plutonium - it is dangerous, long-lasting and once it has leaked there's no getting it back."

In the same article he also states : "The world's toughest privacy measures are as a wet Kleenex against the merciless onslaught of data acquisition. Data is acquired at all times, everywhere."

11 years later Jim Balsillie (3) testified at the hearings of the International Grand Committee on Big Data, Privacy and Democracy held in Ottawa. Part of his testimony are the words "Data is not the new oil – it’s the new plutonium".

Nowadays (personal) data is amazingly powerful and very dangerous when it leaks, difficult to clean up and there are serious consequences when it goes wrong.

Following the above it looks obvious that people and businesses would guard their digital data and keep it private. But instead people share large amounts of personal data with big-tech companies and enterprises store big chunks of their data in various cloud storage facilities without even knowing how well protected (or not) they are or which laws apply on them.

In my opinion it is really unbelievable that so many people are not even aware of the risks they are taking with their (personal) data. In spite of all the news about data leaks (FaceBook, LinkedIn), ransomware attacks and data hacks people are still acting as if 'this is not going to happen to me'. And then, when it happens to them or their company, they look surprised and are not prepared for (and thus able to handle) the financial, operational and privacy consequences.

With the number of data breaches and data leaks rising our digital data is increasingly compromised. Resilient people and organisations should invest in data security and privacy.

At Support2U we started end 2018 with the development of a really secure and private cloud data storage. YOKdata (that's what its called) is a really unique decentralized cloud datastorage with military grade encryption based on Your Own Key and decentralized storage using blockchain technology giving ultimate security and privacy.

Following the fact that privacy is a human right according to the United Nations we strongly believe that you should be the only one that has the key to your data and you and you alone should decide who has access to your data. Hence the choosen solution with an encryption key known only to the owner of the data.

After development and initial beta tests YOKdata has gone 'live' in 2019 and now has over 8500 subscribers worldwide. And we are hoping to see a lot more people and companies using our solution. We have a FREE subscription available so everybody can use it and, by doing so, protect their valuable data. And for companies we have a special Enterprise subscription.

From within the YOKdata environment subscribers are able to share with and send data to people without compromising the privacy and security of this data!

I hope to see you at YOKdata sometime soon!https://yokdata.com

Dixon van Iersel
CEO of Support2U

(1) Cory Doctorow is an activist, science fiction author and co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is also a special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
(2) The Guardian article : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/jan/15/data.security
(3) Jim Balsillie is retired co-CEO of Research In Motion and chair of the Ontario Centre for International Governance Innovation.

#support2u #yokdata #cloud #datastorage #privacy #security