[cyberneticcook]

The biggest issue is that we don't own our data. It's stored in Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.. servers. It should work the other way around, every individual should keep his own data and provide permissions to external services and other people to access it. Is there any project looking into this direction ? How do we reverse this situation ?

[mike_hearn]

It's not your data, just because it's about you.

In this case the article in question was published by a newspaper, in fact due to legal requirement. So the law here is totally messed up. It says the data must be published, but must not be findable. A farce.

[cyberneticcook]

> It's not your data, just because it's about you.

sure, I agree.

In this case I think the mistake was made by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs who didn't understand the consequences of publishing one person's sensitive information on the internet. In my utopia though, the newspaper would have asked (and forcefully obtained in this case thanks to the Ministry authority) permission to Mr Gonzalez to access his sensitive information, only for the amount of time required by the bidding process.

[techmatters]

It is your data - Facebook, Google etc are just custodians of your data and you have the right (under EU law) to have that data removed or anonymized.

The legal requirement is for the information to be published (once) and then, in the normal course of events "forgotten" after a period of time.

It is not the publication that is a concern, it is the permanence of it, and the ease of access that the ruling deals with.

[Pacabel]

Umm, we used to call those "personal websites". They were the norm during much of the 1990s.

They did take some time, effort, skill and money to set up, but they did give far more control over what information was shared, and who had access to it.

[cyberneticcook]

that's not what I meant. For example when using a mobile app, you can give access to your contact list, your position, your pictures etc...All data is stored on your phone and each application must get permission to access your data. What I would like is to extend this model to the web, so that any service that require some information from me will have to ask permission to get it rather than having me store a copy on their database.

[Silhouette]

If you are asking whether anyone working is working on a truly distributed social network, then the short answer is that a number of projects are trying but no-one has been very successful so far.

It does seem like this is a matter of time, though. We managed to build the entire Internet as a system of systems that work together remarkably effectively despite no one authority having universal control of everything.

The main thing keeping sites like Facebook safe today is the critical mass of customers they have, and the fact that current sentiments (and the occasional multi-million dollar marketing effort) encourage newcomers to put their data "in the cloud" in return for not paying any money to store it and not having to worry about the technical details. There are certainly technically viable alternatives.

[cyberneticcook]

A distributed social network would be probably part of it but still doesn't successfully describe my idea (utopia might be a better term..). I would like any service to ask permissions for any piece of data that I control. For example my bank wants to see my last payslip ? sure ask for the proper permission and for how long you need it. Dentist require a proof of my address ? no problems. It will allow me to change my address or phone number for example without having to notify all services (electricity company, bank, doctors, amazon, etc..). I'm actually in the process of moving house again and this is so annoying, why do I have to notify everybody to update the data they have about me ? Wouldn't it be better if they could just ask me about my data at the time they need it ?