Personal Data & Attributes

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) defines personal data as “any information which (is) related to an identified or identifiable natural person.” There is an extensive list of personal data types that are considered to aid in the identification of people and things. Some examples:

• Given and family name

• Telephone number

• Social security number

• Address

• Financial account data

• Information related to appearance

• Biometrics

Personally Identifiable Information

The list above shows clear examples of Personally Identifiable Information (PII). PII refers to information that can be used to identify a specific individual and is considered highly sensitive information. The protection of PII is more than a legal duty: it is a crucial aspect of data privacy.

While the concept of PII is obvious to most people, there are forms of data that are more abstract which can still be used to link back to a subject. For example, answers provided in a survey and the date and time the survey was taken can be used to correlate the identity of the survey participant. Correlation is the concept that refers to combining pieces of personal data to provide insights into a person's behaviour, characteristics or even identify the physical person.

Important to mention is the category of data know as sensitive personal data which is subject to a higher level of protection. Sensitive personal data include anything related to genetic and health data, and political, religious or ideological beliefs.

Types of Data

Meeco distinguishes different data types in user interactions and applies respective best practices in workflows that utilise them. Data types that Meeco interacts with include:

• Raw data – Data that usually only has meaning to the person/service that entered it, or a group of people or services. Most data falls in this category.

• Verifiable data – A digital representation of data that is either typically found in physical documents or something that cannot be represented by it. The entity that is signing the data is trustworthy for the entity that wants to rely on the data. The information is digitally signed and therefore is tamper resistant and instantaneously verifiable. It makes sense to describe these using a semantic data model.

• Self-attested data – A sub-category of verifiable data that has the same properties, although the person that is signing the data is the same as the person entering the data.

• Semantic data – The data is organised in such a way that it can be interpreted meaningfully without human intervention.

How Meeco Handles Data

We design and develop our products with privacy- and security-by-design principles at their core. As per these frameworks we use end-to-end data encryption methods when storing and exchanging data. When using our products, enterprises and their customers can be assured that we never:

• Sell data

• Read or mine data in any way

• Track data in any way

• Build AI/ML models

We ensure that your customers are always in control of their personal data, including their digital identity and assets. We provide tools for people to make informed decisions when sharing and receiving data, and help enterprises reduce cost and meet data compliance requirements on a range of use cases.