People's Daily issued a message: Blockchain allows data "who owns, who benefits"

Data has value, and personal information is also a property right. The key to how to rationally reflect and correctly apply the value of information is to establish a reasonable mechanism of “who owns, who benefits, who uses and who pays”.

Recently, the National Internet Information Office released the first batch of domestic blockchain information service filing lists, involving 164 enterprises in the financial, logistics, communications, agriculture, education and other industries. It can be seen that the management department has begun to find out the main situation of the market and take an important step in regulating Internet information services.

It is very important for you and me to let the "blockchain" develop healthily. You may have experienced this: just after browsing through a shopping site, there are e-commerce or social platforms to send relevant advertising pop-ups. This is because our data has been resold to other platforms. After the introduction of the blockchain technology, the stored transaction information is public, but the account identity information is highly encrypted and can only be accessed if the data owner authorizes it, and the data security is greatly improved.

In the Internet age, data has value, and personal information is also a property right. The key to how to rationally reflect and correctly apply the value of information is to establish a reasonable mechanism of “who owns, who benefits, who uses and who pays”.

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The demands of consumers in the financial industry are particularly urgent. The phenomenon of free exchange and transfer of data between the financial industry and other industries and between various institutions in the industry is not uncommon. For example, some third-party insurance intermediary trading platforms have begun to collect patient information from medical institutions on a large scale and then sell them to insurance companies as the basic data for developing long-term life insurance and critical illness insurance products. For another example, the e-commerce platform collects information such as user bank accounts, as a data source for its own financial business segment, or sells it to banks and small loan companies to help the other party improve their ability to accurately acquire customers and gain huge profits. Financial data is directly related to the state of personal assets. Once it is used by criminals, the consequences are unimaginable. Especially in the context of increasing informationization, personal information is more relevant, and the harm caused by data leakage or abuse is more prominent. Data development and usage specifications need to be established.

The capture and use of personal data information does help financial institutions to more accurately grasp consumer needs, comprehensively identify risks, and design products and services that better meet consumer needs. Therefore, there is a view that in the era of big data, consumers must pay the price of information transfer as long as they enjoy the convenience of information interconnection. This is a fair transaction. This view actually ignores the value of information and ignores the ownership of information. First of all, this kind of transaction is opaque. Consumers provide personal information when receiving services. They are only based on the financial services of the current scene, and there is no contract with commercial organizations for the development and utilization of personal information. Secondly, this kind of transaction is also unfair. After the consumer's personal information is involved in the “commercial chain”, the whereabouts, scope and depth of development and use of the information are often uncontrollable, and the convenience of the consumer directly from the commercial organization. Compared, it is not equivalent. In fact, in some countries where personal credit information systems are complete, commercial organizations have to pay for consumers when they access personal information. For example, a mobile phone application developed by EverySense of Japan, users can set the sensor data that they are willing to sell in advance, such as location, acceleration, number of steps, temperature, etc., all registered users will receive the data from the company. "Menu", which records various trading items and conditions in detail, and consumers can provide 500 yen for personal position data for 3 months.

In addition to the financial industry, many industries are using big data to achieve transformation. China's e-commerce, mobile payment and other industries have already taken the lead in the world. If the shortcomings of consumer personal information transactions cannot be filled as early as possible, the foundation of the digital economy will not be secure, and these leading industry advantages may be lost. It is extremely urgent to increase the regulation of the commercialization of personal information, strengthen the protection of consumers, and scientifically manage and regulate the personal information trading market by means of information technology.

It is imperative to clarify the protection of data property rights from the legal level as soon as possible. Previously, there were legal provisions stipulating that network operators should publicize the purpose of information collection and use the user's consent. This should be extended to all areas involving personal information, especially the “Internet Plus” industry. When users provide personal information, they can try to sign agreements with institutions and platforms to regulate the collection methods and scope of personal information: which data can be anonymized after desensitization, but cannot check the original data; which data cannot be used for commercial purposes. As long as the data product is used by merchants to provide better services to consumers, rather than for trading profits, it may be considered free to use. Otherwise, you need to explain to the consumer the transaction object and payment criteria.

There is no free lunch in the world. Only by implementing the paid collection and use of consumer personal data, can the business entity of each use link take consumer information seriously and avoid leaking consumer personal information.

(Source: "People's Daily" April 8, 2019 edition 18; Author: Han Ming)

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