How Confident Are You to Share Your Personal Identity Over The Internet

The past two years have seen dramatic changes to our lives, not to least to patterns of digital consumership. Digital trends have accelerated far beyond where they would have been had we not been planted in the middle of a pandemic.

Everything switched to online, from the way we work, the way we shop, and even the way we seek entertainment and leisure. In 2021, we have registered to and used more digital platforms and products than ever before.

But flip that coin over to understand the amount of times we have sent out our personal data, payment information and even our physical ID cards, and you can begin to understand why along with the dramatic rise of digital consumerism, we have also witnessed a staggering leap to cyber crime.

A record breaking year for cybercrime

According to recent research, 2021 was a record-breaking year for cyber attacks, data breaches and data hacks, with a jump of 600% for cybersecurity. 2021 saw a jump of 17% for data breaches, accounting for 280 million people.

One blockchain protocol that focuses on identification and identity verification, PhotoChromic, in a recent survey across 1,348 key opinion leaders, explored how worried people are about sharing their personal data in the event that it could be hacked, stolen or misused. It also looked into how safe people felt about sharing their personally identifiable information (PII) online.

The findings showed that: 

• 89% of people are either concerned or very concerned that sensitive, personal information may be hacked or compromised in the future.
• Only 9% of people feel safe or very safe in sharing their personal data online.
• In the event of a data breach or the like, only 22% of people are confident or very confident that they would know who to contact, how to recover their data and / or how to minimize the effects of the data breach on their personal, digital safety

Luckily, this is where the blockchain comes into its own, with utilities that can protect and secure users’ identities. Many of the online platforms and protocols themselves do not require users to ever send their ID or personal data, but rather their wallet address. The blockchain works by distributing data across a huge network of nodes globally. In contrast, companies store user data one server, giving hackers a single doorway to walk through in order to gain control over personal data

PhotoChromic, who conducted the survey, seeks to give back control of identity to the user. It can protect users; NTFs by integrating them with a user identity, to develop a biomimetically managed model of Self-Sovereign Identity (“SSI”). This allows the company to make the user’s identity programmable, verifiable, universally addressable, and digitally secured.

The protocol is leveraged through the utility token $PCHR, which is an ERC-20 token for cross chain compatibility.  

Final Word

As digital trends heat up, so do those that look to take advantage of this jump in potential victims. The blockchain provides users with identity management and protection protocols to keep their private data and information safe.