New System That Helps You Secure Your Data
Although openPDS can, in principle, run on any machine of the user's choosing, in the trials, data is being stored in the cloud.
One of the benefits of openPDS, de Montjoye said, is that it requires applications to specify what information they need and how it will be used.
"When you install an application, it tells you 'this application has access to your fine-grained GPS location,' or it 'has access to your SD card.' You as a user have absolutely no way of knowing what that means. The permissions don't tell you anything," said de Montjoye.
In fact, applications frequently collect much more data than they really need. Service providers and application developers don't always know in advance what data will prove most useful, so they store as much as they can against the possibility that they may want it later.
OpenPDS preserves all that potentially useful data, but in a repository controlled by the end user, not the application developer or service provider.
A developer who discovers that a previously unused bit of information is useful must request access to it from the user. If the request seems unnecessarily invasive, the user can simply deny it.
The research was published in the journal PLOS One.
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