Source: Tencent News.
On 20 July, the 2021 Privacy Computing Conference, co-hosted by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and the Privacy Computing Alliance, was held in Beijing. The conference released the country’s first dedicated study on the fusion of privacy computing and blockchain, the Research Report on the Integration of Privacy Computing and Blockchain Technology (2021), which argues that combining the two can make data circulation and sharing “technically well-founded”. So how exactly does blockchain help protect data privacy?
How blockchain protects data
First, asymmetric encryption. Also known as public-private key encryption, it encrypts and decrypts with a matched key pair. The public key is open and verifies the source of a message; the private key is secret and unique, held only by the user, so that no one can read or collect the relevant data without the owner’s authorisation. Asymmetric encryption thus lets users assert ownership of their personal data, keeps data private as it flows, and guards against hacking.
Second, distributed storage with multi-party consensus. New data is stored as hash values on every blockchain node, and the chain keeps appending new records under the shared supervision of the network. Each write must be verified by 51 percent of the nodes, a wall that blocks any data that fails the consensus mechanism from being written or altered. The chain’s one-way linear growth further guarantees reliability: the more nodes and the longer the chain, the more stable the system.
Third, transparency and traceability. Every trace of how information is added and moved is fully recorded on chain, so the life cycle of any record can be traced end to end. Each block carries the hash of its predecessor, and any tiny modification of data changes every hash along the node path, sharply reducing the chance that personal data can be tampered with or misused.
What blockchain plus data offers
Compared with today’s centralised storage model, storing and circulating user data on a blockchain is naturally resistant to monopolies: it promotes equal rights and obligations for users and lets personal data connect and interoperate directly, in an encrypted and trust-based environment, bypassing third-party platforms, avoiding attack, leakage, tampering and abuse. On the utilisation side, blockchain with smart contracts builds a “rule of code”: a fully programmable, self-running, cooperatively self-governing open system that fosters a healthy ecology of shared data value.
Public concern over user data security keeps rising. As blockchain applications in data security gradually land, data security should stop being an intractable problem.
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