PowerKee’s Bastion of Privacy #17 — Service providers increasingly struggle to protect privacy
French regulators are investigating the rapidly-growing social network Clubhouse over the suspicion that the platform may be breaking some privacy rules. This development could easily disrupt the growth of the emerging network.
If the platform is found to be breaking regulatory rules, it will suggest that users may have been exposed to certain security issues. This investigation joins the litany of ongoing attempts to protect netizens from the various risks that arise from the misuse of data.
In the latest Bastion of Privacy, we highlight the details of the Clubhouse crackdown. We consider better strategies to protect individual’s data, which becomes increasingly important as social networks proliferate and user data becomes more exposed to security flaws.
Concerns Grow Over Clubhouse App
The investigation over the activities of Clubhouse is being carried out by the Commission Nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL), France’s independent data privacy authority. CNIL launched this investigation after receiving a petition that was signed by over 10,000 users of the Clubhouse app.
This is not the first instance of the Clubhouse founders facing scrutiny over their privacy practices. In February 2021, the founders of the Clubhouse app were requested by the data regulator in Hamburg to provide information about how they protect the privacy of European users and their contacts.
Regulatory Inconsistencies Need To Be Addressed
Concerns regarding data security are growing across the world. The matter is complicated by the fact that regulatory requirements vary widely from region to region.
The lack of consistency makes it extremely complex for service providers to offer standardized services across regions. The regulatory requirements imposed on service providers in one US state may be drastically different from their next door neighbour.
For instance, the current investigation of Clubhouse by the CNIL is to determine the extent of compliance towards the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However,, in other parts of the world, a different set of regulatory rules would apply. This inconsistency exposes netizens to various risks which can be difficult to protect against.
For instance, it is estimated that netizens will incur costs of $16.4 billion daily as a result of cybercrime in 2021. Inadequate data protection directly ties to such costs.
(Source: financesonline.com)
For service providers, keeping data stored with varying requirements from one region to another can be extremely complicated and costly. Similarly, users who might move from one region to another might be exposed to a different set of risks that they may not be aware of.
At the same time, it is not possible to have a blanket regulatory framework for every region. This situation exposes the limitations of the current systems and explains why the discussions around data privacy and security are looking endless.
Rather than relying on basic administrative and legislative processes to form regulations for data protection, blockchain innovations like PowerKee are offering a straightforward solution. The platform enables the real owners of data to control how, and to what extent, their data and financial transactions are exposed.
About PowerKee
PowerKee is a cryptocurrency network that makes privacy easy. Users can transact cheaply and instantly while maintaining anonymity. The PowerKee protocol uses a mixture of zero-knowledge proofs and coin mixing to provide strong privacy assurances to its users.
