B.heard champions personal data empowerment as new HAT provider

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

 

24 Jan 2017, 1745hrs: In an MOU signed today, The HAT Foundation is pleased to announce that B.heard, the consumer champion platform that collects and actions public opinion, will become the latest organisation to start using HATs to give its customers transparency over the full information that companies have on them, as a new HAT Service Provider. The companies on B.heard’s platform, from utility companies and loyalty cards to healthcare providers, will now be able to help people to understand what elements of their personal data are the most valuable.

The HAT (Hub of All Things) is a new kind of data exchange infrastructure that’s designed to give control over personal data back to the individual. It privately stores customer information in a micro-server that’s accessible only to customers themselves, allowing organisations to be compliant with the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation. Unlike a data containment service, every HAT is entirely owned by the individual whose data is being stored.

The partnership between the Hub of All Things and B.heard reflects their mutual commitment to consumer rights.

Oscar Vickerman, CEO at B.heard said:

“For B.heard, integrating with HATs is more than just about personal data containment. It’s also about the value of personal data.”

Instead of creating an account on B.heard, or using Facebook or Google to login to the app, B.heard will now give its users the option to create or login with a HAT. Vickerman continued, saying that

“we know that businesses and organisations use consumer data all the time to improve their services and products. Personal data and consumer opinion is of huge commercial value to companies. But we also know that it can be valuable to the people who create it as well. That’s why we’ve partnered with the HAT Foundation to give control over this data back to consumers, first by helping them to understand what information companies have about them, and then by educating them on the value of that data, putting the power of their information back into their own hands.”

Paul Tasker, HATDeX Chief Executive commented on the partnership, saying that

“millions of IoT-connected devices will soon be online. That means individuals will shortly have hundreds of Internet services holding their data, some of which will not be equipped to deal with data security issues.”

He continued:

“Having so many vulnerable access points to our personal information poses a big cyber security risk. Distributing personal data back to individuals in this way removes the incentive that used to exist for hackers, where one successful hack could yield them millions of records of personal data.”

The HAT is an open sourced technology created through a three-year, six-university £1.2m multi-disciplinary research project funded by Research Councils UK and led by WMG, University of Warwick. Organizations can become HAT service providers by giving, or integrating with, their customers’ HATs, instead of creating individual accounts on their own system. All HAT Service providers are certified by the HAT Community Foundation.

B.heard’s HATs will be available from February 2017. Those interested in getting a HAT today can do so here.

 

Press Contact (HATDeX):
Jonathan Holtby
Community Manager, HATDeX
[email protected]
+44 (0) 7508 080295

Press Contact (B.Heard)
Ms. Simran Maini
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +44 (0)7545 100072

Websites:

About the HAT at http://hubofallthings.com
About B.Heard at https://www.bheard.com/