“`html
The present condition of digital identity is chaotic. Your private data is dispersed across countless venues: social media platforms, IoT providers, governmental bodies, websites where you hold accounts, and data brokers you may not recognize. These organizations gather, retain, and trade your information, frequently without your awareness or approval. It’s simultaneously redundant and unpredictable. You possess numerous, perhaps thousands, of disjointed digital identities that often harbor contradictory or illogical details. Each serves its specific function, yet there is no overarching authority to manage and regulate this—especially for you as the identity holder.
We have grown accustomed to the substantial security breaches resulting from having so much information governed by so many disparate entities. Years of privacy violations have led to a plethora of regulations—in various US states, in the EU, and elsewhere—and demands for even tighter safeguards. However, while these regulations strive to protect data confidentiality, there is nothing in place to ensure data integrity.
In this framework, data integrity pertains to its precision, uniformity, and trustworthiness…throughout its entire lifecycle. It involves certifying that data is not only accurately documented but also remains logically coherent across systems, is current, and can be validated as genuine. When data lacks integrity, it can include contradictions, inaccuracies, or obsolete information—issues that can lead to significant real-world ramifications.
In the absence of data integrity, someone might categorize you as a teenager while simultaneously attributing three teenage children to you: a biological impossibility. Worse still, you lack insight into the data profiles linked to your identity, no means to rectify inaccuracies, and no authoritative method to update your details across all the platforms where it is present.
Integrity breaches may not garner the same level of concern as confidentiality breaches, but the reality isn’t bright. A 2017 article in The Atlantic discovered that error rates surpassed 50% in several categories of personal data. A 2019 review of data brokers uncovered that at least 40% of attributes sourced from data brokers are “not at all” precise. In 2022, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported thousands of instances where individuals faced denial of housing, employment, or financial services due to illogical data combinations in their profiles. Likewise, the National Consumer Law Center’s report titled “Digital Denials” highlighted inaccuracies in tenant screening data preventing people from obtaining homes.
Moreover, integrity breaches can profoundly impact our lives. In a 2024 case in Britain, two companies shifted blame for the erroneous debt data that led to devastating financial repercussions for an uninvolved individual. Breonna Taylor lost her life in 2020 during a police operation at her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, when officers executed a “no-knock” warrant on the incorrect residence based on flawed data. They had erroneous intelligence connecting her location to a suspect who actually resided elsewhere.
In certain cases, we have the rights to examine our data, and in others, the rights to amend it, yet these solutions often have limited efficacy. When journalist Julia Angwin endeavored to correct her information across leading data brokers for her book Dragnet Nation, she discovered that even after submitting corrections through official channels, a considerable number of inaccuracies resurfaced within six months.
In some instances, we have the right to erase our data, but—once again—this has limited utility. Some data processing is mandated by law, and some is essential for services that we genuinely want and require.
Our attention needs to pivot from the binary choice of either hiding our data entirely or relinquishing all authority over it. Instead, we require solutions that emphasize integrity in ways that harmonize privacy with the advantages of data sharing.
It’s not as though we haven’t made advancements in methods to better manage online identity. Over time, numerous reliable systems have been created that could address many of these challenges. For instance, envision digital verification that functions like a locked smartphone—it operates when you are the one who can unlock and utilize it, but not if someone else seizes it from you. Or think of a storage device that contains all your credentials, such as your driver’s license, professional certifications, and healthcare information, allowing you to selectively share one without disclosing everything all at once. Imagine being capable of sharing just a single cell in a table or a precise field in a document. These technologies already exist, and they could empower you to securely validate specific aspects of yourself without relinquishing control of your entire identity. This isn’t merely a theoretically superior option to traditional usernames and passwords; the technologies signify a fundamental transformation in how we perceive digital trust and verification.
Standards to facilitate all of these functions emerged during the Web 2.0 era. We have predominantly not utilized them because platform companies have been more inclined to erect barriers around user data and identity. They’ve leveraged control over user identity as a crucial aspect for market supremacy and monetization. They’ve regarded data as a corporate asset, resisting open standards that would democratize data ownership and access. Proprietary, closed systems have more effectively served their interests.
However, there exists an alternative. The Solid protocol, conceived by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, embodies a revolutionary rethink of how data functions online. Solid signifies “SOcial LInked Data.” At its essence, it separates data from applications by storing personal information in user-managed “data wallets”: secure, personal data repositories that users can host wherever they prefer. Applications can access specific data within these wallets, but users retain ownership and control.
Solid surpasses mere distributed data storage. This architecture flips the current data ownership model on its head. Rather than companies possessing user data, users uphold a singular source of truth for their personal information. It incorporates and enhances all those established identity standards and technologies previously mentioned, forming a holistic stack that places personal identity at the architectural core.
This identity-first orientation means that every digital interaction initiates with the authenticated individual who retains control over their data. Applications evolve into interchangeable views into user-owned data rather than isolated data silos. This fosters unprecedented interoperability, as services can securely access precisely the information they require while honoring user-defined limits.
Solid guarantees that user intentions are clearly articulated and consistently enforced throughout the entire ecosystem. Instead of each application implementing its unique authorization logic and access criteria, Solid sets forth a standardized declarative approach where permissions are explicitly delineated through control lists or policies.
“““html
connected to resources. Users can define who has permission to which data with detailed accuracy, employing straightforward phrases like “Alice can view this document” or “Bob can modify this folder.” These access rules remain uniform, irrespective of the application accessing the data, thereby removing the fragmentation and uncertainty seen in conventional authorization systems.
This design transition separates applications from data frameworks. Unlike Web 2.0 services such as Facebook, which necessitate extensive back-end systems to store, process, and monetize user information, Solid applications can be streamlined and solely concentrate on functionality. Developers are no longer required to construct and uphold large data storage systems, surveillance frameworks, or analytics streams. Instead, they can create specialized tools that request access to certain data in users’ wallets, while the heavy lifting of storage and access control is managed by the protocol itself.
Take healthcare as an illustration. The present system compels patients to fragment portions of their medical history across numerous proprietary databases managed by insurance firms, hospital networks, and electronic health record providers. Patients frustratingly resemble a patchwork rather than an individual, as they often cannot retrieve their complete medical history, let alone amend inaccuracies. Meanwhile, those external databases frequently experience data breaches. The Solid protocol permits a radically different methodology. Patients uphold their own thorough medical records, with data cryptographically authenticated by trusted providers, within their own data wallet. When visiting a new healthcare professional, patients can arrive with their complete, verifiable medical history instead of starting anew or awaiting bureaucratic record transfers.
When a patient requires a consultation with a specialist, they can grant temporary, specific access to pertinent sections of their medical history. For instance, a patient referred to a cardiologist could share only heart-related records and vital background information. Alternatively, the patient can provide new and relevant data to the specialist, such as health and nutrition details. The specialist can then append their observations and treatment suggestions directly to the patient’s wallet, accompanied by a cryptographic signature confirming their medical credentials. This method fills dangerous information voids while ensuring that patients retain an appropriate role in determining who has access to their information and for what purpose.
Once a patient-doctor relationship concludes, the patient keeps all records generated during that relationship—contrary to today’s model where switching providers often results in losing access to historical records. The departing doctor’s signed contributions remain verifiable components of medical history, yet they no longer have direct access to the patient’s wallet without explicit consent.
For insurance claims, patients can offer temporary, auditable access to specific data needed for processing—no more and no less. Insurance companies receive verified information directly related to claims but should not be expected to possess uncontrolled extensive profiles or retain information longer than permitted by privacy regulations. This methodology significantly mitigates unauthorized data usage, the risk of breaches (privacy and integrity), and administrative expenses.
Perhaps most profoundly, this structure allows patients to selectively engage in medical research while safeguarding their privacy. They could contribute anonymized or personalized data to studies that align with their interests or conditions, wielding precise control over what information is shared and for how long. Researchers could access larger, more diverse datasets while participants would maintain oversight over their information—establishing a proper ethical framework for enhancing medical understanding.
The ramifications extend well beyond healthcare. In finance, customers could maintain verified transaction histories and creditworthiness credentials independently of credit bureaus. In education, students could compile verified credentials and portfolios that they genuinely own instead of depending on institutions’ isolated records. In employment, workers could preserve portable professional histories with verified credentials from previous employers. In each scenario, Solid enables individuals to take control of their own data while allowing for verification and selective sharing.
The economic model of Web 2.0 directed us towards centralized platforms and surveillance capitalism, but a better alternative has always existed. Solid integrates different components into a cohesive framework that enables the identity-first architecture we should have had from the beginning. The protocol doesn’t merely address technical challenges; it realigns the fundamental incentives that have made the modern web increasingly adversarial to both users and developers.
As we anticipate a future of heightened digitization across various sectors of society, the necessity for this architectural transformation becomes even more evident. Individuals should be capable of retaining and presenting their own verified digital identity and history, rather than being at the mercy of siloed institutional databases. The Solid protocol makes this future technologically feasible.
This essay was composed with Davi Ottenheimer and originally appeared on The Inrupt Blog.
“`