How Bloom Keeps Your Data Secure
Every day, as you browse, type, and talk online, your activity is being monitored, tracked, and analyzed. Your personal information is being siphoned off, pooled, and sold from company to company, with treasure troves of aggregated data sitting on the servers of tens of thousands of companies all around the world, often weakly protected by lax data security practices and policies.
It’s all there: your name, address, relatives, education level, marital status, employment details, purchase history, interests and habits, court records, and financial data.
Your entire history, from your identity to your finances, is exploited by credit bureaus, data brokers, and marketers for financial gain.
All the while, hackers poke and prod these companies for security vulnerabilities in the hopes, often realized, of stealing the identity and private data of as many consumers as they can.
At Bloom, we are giving you the tools to take back control of your data.
Bloom enables you to own, authorize the use of, and protect your data using the latest advancements in blockchain technology. With Bloom, the risk of your data being exposed in a data breach or leak is greatly reduced. No more centralized data storage. No more selling off your data to the highest bidder. No more risking identity theft. Your identity, and your highly sensitive personal and financial information, is securely safeguarded on your own personal device using cutting-edge cryptography.
Click here to download the Bloom mobile app on iOS or Android today
The Status Quo: Your Data is Being Mined, Sold, and Exposed
- Data is Collected and Sold Without Consent
- Consumers Lack Control and Ownership
- Industry is Opaque and Unaccountable
- Centralized Storage Presents a Single Point of Attack
- High Risk of Data Breaches and Identity Theft
1. Collecting Your Data
Credit bureaus are the some of the worst offenders when it comes to collecting your data without your consent. Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion each store files on more than 200 million Americans, receiving updates from over 10,000 data sources who provide them with more than 1.3 billion pieces of information each month. It is vast store and flow of information that tracks car loans, mortgages, credit cards, and much more. At the same time, data brokers have proliferated. Data marketer Acxiom stores files on over 700 million consumers worldwide, with each file comprised of over 1,500 unique data points. In total, Acxiom collects more than 50 trillion pieces of data each year. There are tens of thousands of companies harvesting data on you every single day.
2. Selling Your Data
These vast troves of personal information have become a precious natural resource, data mining a new gold rush, providing billions in revenue to companies as they analyze it for insights and patterns, and then sell it on to banks, credit card issuers, insurance companies, and specialty lenders. One of the largest data marketers, Acxiom, had over $1 billion in revenue in 2013. Equifax brings in $3.1 billion of its $4.34 billion in revenue from selling your data. Overall, the three credit bureaus rake in over $10 billion in revenue from selling your most private and confidential information each year. Consumers have no control over the data that is sold or what it is used for. This data industry exists in the shadows, with most people going about their lives entirely unaware of its existence even as the data itself impacts and molds the opportunities afforded to them.
3. Exposing Your Data
Data breaches compromise your identity and make you susceptible to identity theft, and the risk of data leaks from central parties is on the rise. Centralized data aggregators present a single-point of attack, a highly visible and extremely rewarding target for hackers and identity thieves. In 2017, there were over 1,500 data breaches. Last year, Equifax had the personal information of over 147 million Americans stolen from their servers. In June, data broker Exactis exposed the personal information of 350 million individuals. Just last month, hackers gained control of over 50 million Facebook accounts. In 2016, the rate of identity fraud increased by 16%, causing financial losses of over $16 billion. More than 6% of consumers became victims of identity fraud in 2016, as the rise in data breaches has become a “boon for fraudsters.”
With Bloom: Own, Control, and Protect Your Data
- Own, Control, and Protect Your Own Data
- Cryptographically Secure Your Data
- Decentralization Reduces Risk of Data Breaches
- Open Source Code Provides Transparency
- Limited Access Protects You from Identity Theft
- Enhance Personal Data Privacy and Security
With data breaches and identity theft on the rise, corporations failing to properly secure and protect your data, and exploitative data practices running rampant, it is time to take back control of your data.
Bloom is a secure identity where you are the custodian of your own information. Bloom allows you to create a decentralized, cryptographically secure global identity on the blockchain, dramatically reducing the risk for identity theft due to data breaches.
With Bloom, you own your data, control your data, and authorize the use of your data.
How Bloom Keeps Your Data Secure
1. Own Your Data
When creating and building your BloomID, you are able to securely verify your personal information, such as your name, phone number, email address, and social media profiles, as well financial information, such as utility bill payments, income, assets, and bank statements, with trusted data attesters. When verifying your information, you choose only the data that you want to include. Our attesters then verify the authenticity of your information, and once verified data is associated with your BloomID on the blockchain, personal information is stored locally on your own device using public-key cryptography, giving you full ownership and control over a secure and reusable global identity. You can strengthen your BloomID by completing additional attestations as they become available.
2. Control Your Data
Unlike with credit bureaus, you, and only you, decide how to use and share your data. With Bloom, you are in complete control of your own personal data, and your information can only be accessed when you personally authorize the sharing of your data. When information is requested by you or by a company needing to verify specific information, you will receive a notification requesting you to give permission by signing with your private key from your mobile device. You authorize the release of that data via the mobile app, which is protected by FaceID or TouchID, by signing with your securely stored private key. All information is securely shared with end-to-end encryption. Bloom also gives you the ability to selectively control the information that you choose to share, limiting access and privileges, providing only necessary data points and ranges, and preventing companies from collecting more information than is needed, further reducing your exposure risk.
3. Protect Your Data
Bloom uses public-key cryptography to securely store and share your data with only the identity verification companies and lenders that you choose, without the exposure risk of centralized storage and aggregation. Only your private key, securely stored locally, can be used to gain access to your identity and data. And only you hold your private keys to your encrypted personal information. Because you own your data, data which is protected by the latest in digital security protocols, the risk of your data being accessed by hackers or stolen in a data breach is greatly reduced, providing the peace of mind that your information is safe from prying eyes.
Bloom: Join the Data Revolution
Bloom solves the problems of unsecure and extremely vulnerable centralized data and identity systems, providing a decentralized identity that puts your security and privacy first, reduces the risk of data breaches, and mitigates the risk of identity theft. Bloom marks a revolution in the way individuals control their data. We are excited to be offering an alternative path forward, one that addresses the wide-ranging issues and concerns regarding data security and privacy.
It’s time to take back control of your data and unlock the power of a global secure identity, click here to download the Bloom mobile app on Android or iOS today!
