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PRESS RELEASE: The HAT Foundation launches Crowdfunding Campaign to help individuals take control of their digital lives and claim back their data from corporations.
TUES, Feb 16 – The HAT Foundation has launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to mobilise a social movement to put the power of the internet back into individual hands. Link to Indigogo: http://igg.me/at/getahat
The HAT is a platform technology that will give individuals the technological power to claim, own, control and share their data the way they want to, to make better and more informed decisions. The Indiegogo campaign aims to crowdfund further development for the roll-out of HAT’s worldwide within a year.
Using The HAT, users will be able to assess and assemble the data that companies hold on them. By combining information from sources such s Facebook, Google, broadband providers, supermarkets, online stores, streaming services and transport providers with personal data including calendar, photos and communication – users will be able to create full digital versions of themselves or the first time. More importantly, users will have the option to trade and benefit from this data.
Says Paul Tasker, the Chief Executive of the HATDEX “By 2020, 25 billion things will be connected to the internet – the ‘Internet-of-Things’- all of them generating data. This data has enormous value – to individuals, businesses and the economy. It is therefore important that we as individuals have the same power as corporations to use the data for our own benefit.
“We believe that if all of us have our own HATs, we will have more power in the future to influence how data is collected, stored and used; hugely benefitting ourselves and society whilst providing new opportunities to firms wanting to sell to us.”
Irene Ng, Chairman and Chief Economist of HATDEX says “As internet users, we hand over unimaginably vast amounts of personal data to search engines, online shopping sites and social networks every day, every time we are online. Most people don’t know what their data is, what it includes, what it looks like and how valuable it is. The HAT will change that.”
The Indiegogo campaign will run until April 15th and seeks to raise £50,000 to launch in BETA to the first users this summer.
Today also sees the launch of the HAT Foundation, a newly-formed social enterprise that will take over the HAT from WMG, the University of Warwick, which has led the development of the HAT through a £1.2 million research programme involving six universities. See the University’s press release here
“We are privileged to be taking over the HAT from the research team at WMG, and we aim to take it forward by scaling up the HAT ecosystem and community of HAT users. We want to promote widespread take-up of HATs by individuals, to have as many people be part of the HAT social movement for a better future on the Internet,” Tasker Said.
