The Privacy of Your Personal Data: An Important Issue
In this article, I aim to highlight the crucial issue of personal data privacy.
Technology has significantly impacted our ability to protect privacy. Much of what individuals and organizations do is now publicly accessible. Third parties manage, store, and utilize personal and corporate data, patterns, preferences, and activities. Many modern business models are based on collecting, organizing, and reselling our personal information.
What is the Issue?
If something is free, then you are the product. Your personal data might be stolen and sold without your consent to digital corporations.
It is vital to understand that personal data goes beyond your birthdate and city of residence. Correspondence, financial and medical data, geolocation tags, addresses, search histories, preferences, and interests are just a few examples of the information stored on these companies’ servers. Despite various attempts to secure virtual databases, their reliability cannot be fully trusted. According to Gemalto, 2.6 billion personal records were compromised in 2020 alone, averaging 82 records every second.
A prominent example is the 2018 case involving Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Over several hours, Mark explained how the personal data of over 87 million Facebook users was used in the campaigns of Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and the UK’s Brexit referendum. This incident was a turning point, sparking widespread discussion on the need to protect personal data.
Countering Data Theft and Trafficking
Can blockchain technology address the problem of data security?
Blockchain technology can mitigate privacy erosion while still providing personal information when necessary. For instance, users can store personal data on a blockchain and temporarily make it public to receive specific services. Bitcoin and other blockchain-based digital currencies have shown that secure and transparent transactions are possible via a decentralized peer-to-peer network and a distributed public ledger.
However, there is a catch. Blockchain is designed to store data permanently, which conflicts with modern privacy laws.
On May 25, 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was adopted. This new law enhances data security and strengthens control over individuals’ information on digital platforms.
The Blockchain and GDPR Conflict
The issue arises because blockchain, in its current popular form, is not GDPR compliant. Information stored on a public network cannot be deleted, meaning users cannot delete or edit their information.
Nevertheless, many experts believe that using a blockchain with completely anonymous data might be the best way to comply with the GDPR.
Aleo: A Solution?
Aleo is the first platform to offer completely private applications. It achieves this by utilizing decentralized systems and zero-knowledge cryptography to secure user data online. At its core, Aleo provides users and developers with unlimited computing resources with absolute privacy, essentially offering personalized Web3 services.
By using zero-knowledge cryptography, Aleo executes smart contracts off-chain, enabling a wide range of private and scalable decentralized applications.
Another noteworthy feature is Aleo’s creation of a programming language for zero-knowledge applications—Leo.
Developer Tools and Features
Web developers can publish their work to the Aleo Package Manager (PM), a registry that freely hosts and distributes commonly used code. Aleo PM allows developers to quickly import packages to build new web applications. The new Teams feature facilitates collaboration on complex packages like SHA256 or AES, making it easier for developers to share their work.
Aleo PM is integrated into Aleo Studio, the first IDE for private web applications, allowing developers to swiftly search for and import new packages.
Aleo’s PoS Mechanism
Aleo is a layer 1 blockchain utilizing zero-knowledge cryptography to build scalable and private decentralized applications. It uses a PoS mechanism to ensure block accuracy, providing the best experience for application users by finalizing transactions quickly.
Aleo retains the PoSW mechanism while moving to PoS, ensuring that although Aleo has adopted PoS, the verifier can still receive rewards. The PoS method offers efficiency and energy savings, leading to faster transactions, better scalability, and quicker finalization.
Addressing the Privacy Dilemma
Aleo’s zkCloud addresses one of the biggest challenges in blockchain today: the privacy dilemma. On a public blockchain, program execution occurs in a global “virtual machine” managed by each network node, which is inefficient, slow, and costly for end users. zkCloud overcomes these limitations by separating application execution from blockchain-maintained state. Zero-knowledge proofs enable Aleo to offer full programmability, privacy, and high transaction throughput.
With zkCloud, individual objects interact through secure transactions. Programs run on zkCloud, and the only thing Aleo network nodes see are the “shadows” of shielded transactions. Zero-knowledge proofs reveal nothing about their content, meaning transactions can remain private unless deliberately disclosed.
Conclusion
Aleo represents a significant advancement in addressing privacy concerns in the digital age, leveraging blockchain technology and zero-knowledge cryptography to ensure user data remains secure and private.