IOTA in the e-commerce realm: a secure identity against data mongers

Hey everyone. Following my convo, with the good mods of CC, I decided to post an informative, objective, and non-hyping analysis about the specific topic at hand.
I try to keep it tight, it’s gonna be a bit longer though.

Important: There are many good and progressive projects, and maximalism is so 2017ish.
IOTA is one of many. We all gonna make it.
I plan to provide this sub with a rather long IOTA post every 4 weeks because I’m familiar with the Tangle and not with every other project. I guess reading up on IOTA made me a one-trick pony - I can’t know everything, so don't expect me to write something on DOGE or ADA... maybe I learn that at a later point.
The 4-week schedule was approved by the mods via modmail and I’m grateful to get this opportunity -really.
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In short, this post is about IOTA, e-commerce, self-sovereign identities, and data markets.
Data markets are a relatively new phenomenon and not really known by many because these things are either boring or discussed by the US Senate when Mark Zuckerberg did his Lizzard thing again. We see the memes but not what really happens behind closed curtains.

In the next few years, we, as ordinary consumers, will certainly have the chance to gain better control over our digital footprint and user behavior and, if everything goes right, even be able to monetize it ourselves.

Many services are offered for free or at low prices these days, and online more than anywhere else, the washed-up mantra is: if the product is free, you're the product.

In any case, in this article, I would like to explain why e-commerce and data markets are directly connected and why IOTA can find a long-term solution that can give users more freedom, more power, and emancipation.
The world is complex and, needless to say, governments and big companies brought not only harm but also progress, structures, and secure environments that we rely on, but there are things we should not give away: our personal data.

History has shown that in most cases this is used to our disadvantage and the more you think about it, the more you realize: why should Emerdata Limited (successor of Cambridge Analytica - the bad guys feeding Facebook and political parties) and other data mongers like Google, etc be allowed to own, process and sell our behavior?

Why should they be allowed to do any of that and why is this not our value stream?

Well, it could be, if we decide on a change.

The problem:
Alice decides to buy a t-shirt, a Ledger Nano, and -let’s say- a vibrator. The vendors are using Google affiliates and ad services (and she isn't even asked) and the next day, she has the shirt, a Ledger Nano, and her love toy but most commercial pages she visits the day after, that use advertisements, are filled with more t-shirt-banners, nasty crypto advertisements, and in some cases, even uncomfortable ads for sex shops.
This system is called real-time bidding and it’s a real pain in the ass because not only will you have to deal with pesky ads for a while but they know what you’ve been buying and they monetize that on your behalf.
Detailed consumer habits are collected in the background and from here on, analysts can look at you and your relationship status, your sexual orientation, your financial decisions, (if you bought medicine) your medical conditions, and all those things you would never tell anyone unless you know and trust them.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are even engaging in voice recognition once you accepted their terms and services. Feels Snowden'esque to me.

Now, some would say "but hey, there are GDPR and other regulations to prevent this!".

The truth is that there is still a whole armada of data mongers that collect, process, and sell data in almost all industrialized nations, and it isn't even legal because people don't like to read 19 pages of legal disclaimer nor sending selfies over Instagram. The sad truth is that most people don't care.

There are data leaks, there are insurance companies that adjust their personalized contracts and give disadvantages to the insured, and of course, there are people who see things you just don't want them to see or hear.

This is the world we live in and so far there is little the inexperienced can do to prevent it.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and most other projects have specific use cases and of course a raison d'être, but IOTA has taken, amongst others, a direction towards digital identities and data integrity that is largely avoided by the aforementioned projects.

The solution:

In the future, customers and buyers will be able to shop with secure, pseudonymous temporary identities that prevent data mongers from creating a personalized profile.

I imagine there could even be (probably also paid but someone has to do the work) providers who collect the data of individual addresses and sell them to the owner of the hash for an accumulation fee (and if you trust them).
The key elements: IOTA Streams. A product of IOTA that makes it impossible for third parties to read the data between interested parties so that the data profile remains unknown and valuable until a buyer of the data buys the private key of the (sometimes temporary) digital identity (IOTA identity) from the user like Alice.

This prevents unwanted real-time bidding and prevents data mongers from creating profiles without the users' consent and monetization.
With a secure identity, there are no hacks, no unwanted profiles, or bad surprises. You own your data.
As much as Facebook and Google would like to know everything about you and your things, they can’t. Wouldn’t that be great?
You might want to read up on IOTA streams and IOTA Identity.
With Biilabs, a Taiwanese company, there is a company already creating and constantly updating a solution called TangleID, a fascinating project.

There was even one practical approach originating in the car industry, namely by Jaguar Land Rover.
They advertised a partnership with IOTA and claimed that people can earn iotas with the data that has been generated by their cars while driving. Pretty neat but I don't know the status of it.
More importantly, there is a European Union supported project as part of H2020: ENSURESEC that leveraged IOTA:
“How to make an impact in the e-commerce ecosystem”, a bridge for e-commerce and self-sovereign identities. Fully GDPR compliant. This specific project is one of the reasons I support IOTA.
This is no future music but a practical approach in the making.

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A Tangle-based identity solution

Some words about e-commerce:
E-commerce is one of the most important developments in global trade.

Through networking and partial automation, millions of customers can order things from their desks and pick them up at their doorsteps every day. Most if not all of these orders are offered through centralized services that rely on fees for their self-service. So while it often seems that merchants offer value transactions for free, they have to bear horrendous costs in the background that are ultimately passed back to the customer.

The media landscape has also been completely restructured and offers couch potatoes any product that can be consumed through headphones or screens.

Amazon, Netflix, Youtube, and AppleTV, and by now even Disney rely on payment models that cause imprecise costs through monthly subscriptions.

Every customer pays the same price, regardless of whether they consume 2 or 200 titles in a month.

The costs of over- or underconsumption are covered either by the customer or, vice versa, by the service provider.

A decentralized network like IOTA has unique advantages for both parties due to its fee-free nature and enables completely new ways that ultimately rewrite the rules of competition.
Token-streaming for second-to-second consumption of said media would be one idea that is floating around in the IOTA realm. But that’s indeed future music.

Summary:
Most crypto projects have specific use cases.

IOTA has, among other things, identity solutions and feeless data- and value micro-payments to offer, which can make the shopping of the future simple, secure, and value-creating.

IOTA is not there yet, but it is exciting and promising, so hopefully, the threat and pillaging of data mongers can be limited in the future, making customers sovereign over their behavior.

Thanks for reading and keep it up, crypto is here to stay and we can be grateful to experience such an exciting time.