Our mission statement and the problem we solve
Privacy by design is not about data protection but designing so data doesn’t need protection.
Demografy is built under the belief that non opt-in use of personal data is wrong and increasingly dangerous.
Our mission is to considerably reduce this established harmful practice by making data brokers consumer-friendly and privacy by design.
To achieve this Demografy develops noninvasive technologies that enable extracting consumer insights and actionable data without tracking, identifying or disclosing sensitive data of individual persons.
Howard A. Tullman, American serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist, once said in his article on Inc.com that personal data is the oil of the digital age. The main point of this comparison was about the value of consumer data that fuels businesses. He concluded that the winners in the digital age are those with the most, and most accurate, data.
And he is absolutely correct in this regard. Data-driven marketing is omni-present. The era of traditional marketing is over. Today all key decisions and activities are based and backed by collected data and especially private data of consumers. All major corporations and many smaller businesses now increasingly employ data-driven analytics, marketing and other solutions in their processes.
But perhaps Howard A. Tullman did not realize the true extent of his correctness in comparing today’s consumer data market to oil. What is oil industry today? It is increasingly obsolete and retrograde set of technologies which are also expensive, risky and dangerous to the environment. And that’s the key reason why comparing today’s consumer data industry to oil industry is remarkably accurate. Consumer data is a critical asset for businesses. And the one who holds the most of it is the winner. At the same, technologies used to collect and process consumer data are obsolete, inefficient and dangerous.
What today’s data brokers industry is
The concept is old and straightforward. It’s called database marketing or data append services or data brokerage. It is based on the use of non opt-in third-party private data. The source of third-party data is generally unknown. It can be purchased from another data broker or collected using controversial or illicit methods like in Facebook / Cambridge Analytica case. You never know where the data comes from.
Hundreds or even thousands of companies use these methods to resell private data. They have huge databases containing information about tens and even hundreds of millions of consumers. This information contains demographic and behavioral profiles of people as well as sensitive information like addresses, emails, phones, credit history and many more.
Why companies need consumer data
To break customers and prospects into smaller segments based on demographics or other criteria and target each segment more efficiently.
- To boost marketing campaigns with better targeting
- To make more relevant offers knowing consumer better
- To get rich customer insights
At the end of the day they need data to survive and stay afloat.
How it works
In order to get additional consumer data about its customers company is required to provide data broker with customers’ sensitive information. The more sensitive information is provided the higher probability to get additional data.
Example. If company A wants income level and gender of its customer it should provide company B with address, phone, email or other personally identifiable information of this customer in order for B to obtain record of this customer in their database. BTW, in 80–90% of cases they even are unable to obtain the record but the sensitive information is disclosed.
Even tech giants like Facebook purchase additional data about its users from their data partners. Thus contributing to increasing probability of next data leak.
Problem: personal datapocalypse
First of all, we believe that personal data leaks can be disastrous on a unprecedentedly large scale. The most common reason why non opt-in personal data use is bad you can think of is violation of privacy. Personal data can also be used by oppressive regimes to spy on people. Though these are serious issues, there are already many debates on these matters so we’re going to focus on other, perhaps less obvious, aspects of the problem.
You may think that there is nothing special about another one data leak. We already had plenty of them. But times change. In order to see consequences of circulating large amounts of non opt-in personal information in huge number of copies between many unregulated companies, we should try to look to the future.
To look to the future we should analyze current emerging technologies and technology trends. Some of them are:
- Our infrastructure is becoming more centralized and automated. Every critical infrastructure is controlled by computer networks and systems.
- People remain to be the keys to the infrastructure. We’re not completely automated yet and all these systems are ran by people having access to all key elements.
- People are becoming digital-first. We already spend more than 12 hours per day consuming media. We extensively use computer networks to access other computers remotely. These include online banking, work, data centers and many other use cases. Bring your own device (BYOD), the practice of using own devices by employees, is extremely widespread with 95% of employees using at least one personal device for work.
- Artificial Intelligence and, particularly, Machine Learning are maturing and can infer more output data from less input data over time. Demografy is one of many examples of how scarce data can be used to predict demographics or other useful information.
- Hackers may be already started to weaponize AI. For example, data scientists from ZeroFO implemented ML-based proof-of-concept for fishing. Program learnt from users’ behavior in Twitter to create personalized fishing messages with higher success rate. Researchers at the Stevens Institute of Technology and the New York Institute of Technology introduced program that uses deep-learning to predict user passwords. It’s able to produce AI-guessed passwords with much higher accuracy and speed.
In other words vital computer networks are controlled by remote computer devices accessed using our personal data which is roaming everywhere and vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated malware.
And this roaming data can be mined, processed and learnt from. The problem of roaming personal data is not access to passwords. Fortunately, in most cases passwords are sufficiently encrypted. The problem is technology shift in applying machine learning based approaches in malware.
Malicious software can be fed with enough leaked personal data to start learn from it and predict passwords or replicate identities of even people whose data was not leaked.
The problem is aggravated by accumulating of both quality and quantity of potentially leaked data. The more data points in leaked data the more accurate future algorithms in reverse engineering of identities.
For example, you can reverse engineer identity of POTUS or CEO of major corporation using leaked personal data. Because, at the end of the day, in the new digital age we are just data points forming our digital profiles.
And we should protect these digital profiles today stopping to use outdated technologies which are reliant on tracking, identifying and collecting personal data of individuals. The increasing sharing and selling of personal data increases the probability of this grim future. And unfortunately today’s industry remains deaf to such easily predictable consequences.
We are already on the verge of the future in which it would be more correct to compare consumer data industry to “nuclear arms race” between tech giants. Accumulating and circulating personal data used by all major corporations already makes this comparison relevant.
Solution: a trustless system
There is the ongoing debate about balance between consumer privacy and companies’ hunger for consumers’ private data. The data marketing itself is not evil and is not the cause of the problem. We need it.
We believe that we don’t need a trade-off between both. We need both protected privacy and the value of data that improves our lives. But we don’t need increasingly dangerous consequences current industry and technologies cause.
At Demografy we believe that solution to any problem in the digital age is technology. Though some moderate legal changes may be useful, we don’t believe that government over regulation can solve consumer data market problem. As any other party governments can’t be a trusted third-party so we need a trustless system to operate sensitive personal data.
A trustless system is one that does not depend upon the intentions of its participants who may be honorable or malicious. The system functions in the same manner regardless of intentions. For example, blockchain, with a peer-to-peer protocol that is also transparent and immutable, is trustless.
Demografy implements the concept of trustless system at the core of its technology. The fundamental difference is that personally identifiable information is not part of the process at all. All personal data stays in-house and never shared. You don’t need to trust Demografy because you don’t provide it with sensitive data.
Demografy technology requires only first and last names. It can even process masked last names like masked credit card numbers.
e.g. John J*son
We believe this is the time to start processing person’s private data with the same restrictions and caution we process credit card data.
This enables to completely mask identities of people and protect their sensitive information while making ads, more relevant offers and data insights possible. This also encourages agencies and consumer data processing companies request only non personally identifiable information from their clients to provide them with demographic data.
