How can we trust the companies with whom we do business to keep our data safe and secure? History has conclusively shown: we can’t. The companies who collect our data on an industrial scale: how can we control how they use our data wisely? History has shown, they are entirely uncontrollable.

Since the internet got under way (or at least, the Web2.0 version of the internet), privacy has been a constant, and increasing worry. Those adverts that follow you around your browsing: they do more than sell you rubbish! They control what job adverts you see, they are definitely part of a prospective employer’s due diligence on you, and they might even affect your access to financial services or healthcare. Despite worldwide data protection regulation, it’s almost impossible for you to find or correct this mass of data ‘they’ hold about you.

Despite the obvious and growing problems, there is virtually a complete lack of regulation, there is no possibility of creating enforceable codes of conduct, and there are rising demands by governments to weaken our already broken system still further.

To alleviate these problems, there’s an idea growing: a mixture of technical, social, and operational solutions, designed and developed by grass-roots technologists, that are based on the presumption that your data is yours alone, and it is up to you to authorise specific uses of it. “They” can hold no data about you at all. That movement is called Web3.0.

In this talk, Jules will unpack just how important the privacy problem is today (and why it’s getting worse). He’ll explain what Web3.0 is, and some of the cryptographic principles which underpin it, He’ll mention some of the companies and products that are active in the field, and, hopefully, inspire you to get involved.