By Rosa Louwerse

In today's society, your online identity is constantly exposed. When being online you share all kinds of information that is related to who you are and what you do. Regarding the offline world, you could say there is no difference. When talking to others, for instance, you probably share information also related to who you are and what you do. Except for the fact that in the online world everything about you is massively collected and stored. This collected information is sorted into data and the chances are great you can’t say exactly who has access to this data and where or when it is collected and stored. And this is exactly where the story begins. In this blog series, we like to introduce our vision on person data and how it directly affects the way we create a Privacy first communication platform. 

At iYYU, we strongly believe that you should be in control of all data that belongs to you. You should be in control of who sees what, what you share with whom knowing others aren’t looking over your shoulder. You should be able to see where your data is going, who is using it, and for which reason. In this context, the question arises what can be seen as person data? Is it just your name and email address or does it involve also other data? What kind of data can we determine that says something about you? After some research and multiple discussions in the team, we came up with the concept of the Person Data Stack. 

The Person Data Stack contains six layers of person data categories. These layers are developed from data that is directly traceable to the person behind the ‘user’, to data that is indirectly traceable to the person but still can be seen as person data. Here is the list of what we see as person data. 

• Personal data - Includes all individual unique data like name, age, birthdate, fingerprints etc.
• Conversation data - Includes all conversation-related data like contents of messages, the title of messages etc. 
• Transactional data - Includes all transaction-related data like proposition details including price etc. 
• Content data - Includes file name, details etc. 
• Generated data - Includes metadata and data that the platform generates and data iYYU adds etc. 
• 2nd party data - Includes supplier/ integrated application data etc. 

In building iYYU further the concept of the Person Data Stack has already proven to be very helpful. Developing features is one thing, but making sure all users are in control of their person data while using the features, is something different. The principle of the Person Data Stack help the team to develop the Privacy first communication platform that they envision. It helps when it comes to implementing concepts of transparency, control and ownership of data into the platform. It helps when we are creating the legal documents and how we implement regulations. But it also helps when it comes to choosing suppliers for developing our product. Do they have their data control on point in relation to our vision? And last but not least it helps us to be aware of which person data has a direct impact on how to develop a platform which makes users aware of their data as well. 

This blog is the beginning of sharing more and more about what we are up to at iYYU while creating the Privacy first communication platform. We are very excited about the road that lies ahead of us and we like to invite you to join our journey. Feel free to connect with us, with me, Rosa Louwerse, and let’s go on a journey together. Towards a society where you are in control of your person data. 

Rosa Louwerse 

‘Be open, be positive, be you. Connect with me on iyyu.com/vi/rosa-louwerse' 

Visuals by Dennis Luijer