RE: Thoughts on CyberSecurity, Blockchain and AntiAbuse
As much as I would like to keep the information we share private. I don't think today in our ever changing world it is a possibility.
I trust that you will agree with me that they only way we can keep our lives and communications private would be to live in caves and communicate by beating on rocks.
This one issue of keeping our important information a secret is the the most important task in the future of the "internet of things".
Things are moving at such a rapid pace most are not considering the implications of the ever encroaching spy networks(governments) and cyber criminals that want our data.
If we can create the team a folks that can overcome this obstacle. Do the job to help everyone keep the data only in the hands of those who they want to have it. We will have accomplished a greater task than the guy who built the first transistor at Texas Instruments.
This is the most important issue in cyber security that exists. Most tools for encryption and data storage today have back doors built into them to make it easy for that data to be extracted. That is the first obstacle we have to overcome!
So, you touched on the confidentiality corner of the CIA Triad which is very important and you bring to mind the question of whether of not we can trust VPN service providers to ensure it.
Perhaps, open source VPN software would be a good idea. If there is transparency with the code, I doubt we would have to worry about anybody trying to sneak in a backdoor.
On the topic of data storage, there are blockchain projects that intend to answer that but scaling is an issue. I am most familiar with SiaCoin and the idea is you have data distributed across up to 21 hosts and the data can ONLY be accessed with your private key. Also, due to the distributed nature of the data, I believe it is fault tolerant as long as 7 of those 21 stay online.
I currently accept the risk of using OneDrive which was bundled with MS Office but I may consider giving renting from the SiaCoin network a try. It's still not a fully mature project but David Vorick and team have high ambitions. Looking forward to seeing it develop.
Maybe you're looking at hiding information the wrong way mate. Perhaps the trick is to let them have the majority of the information but hide its context.
Simple example. 8746352237 I am sure is someone's bank account number which I've just shown to the world, I could probably give you more details, but without one particular key detail. Its useless to you.
We need to pick and choose carefully what we protect and what doesn't really matter. I truly think this is the way forward in regards personal information security.
Potato. Potato. POTATO!