Data deluge + insecure storage of data should worry the average consumer as well as the company that collects this data.  In an October 2015 Strata+Hadoop keynote, Pinboard.in founder Maciej Ceglowski spoke how the internet user should be concerned about being Haunted by Data. He argues that companies that collect data need to keep it secure, or even better don't store data so it never ends up in the wrong hands. I've been surprised as an Airbnb host how many times I've gotten someone's personal data in the form of a driver's license passed on to me 'accidently.'  I don't believe this is intentional, but just one example of how easy it is to lose ownership of your own data. Vijilent believes in 'ephemeral data', which means that we collect publicly available data to calculate our trust score, but we don't store the data nor the score in our servers after the Vijilent app is closed. Additionally, if you don't want us to even calculate a score for you, email us at support@vijilent.com and we will put you in our 'do not disturb' file.

As a side note: a question we frequently get asked is how do you calculate my score?  This is the topic for my next blog. Transparency is crucial to our business, so I'll share this information in my next posting.