Julian Ranger has got something to show me. “Over a drink. Please. The same as last time.”
It’s Comprobo, a clever piece of technology that takes over the webcam in your computer and films what you’re watching – invaluable apparently if you’re filling in a form for a financial product, say, and there’s later a dispute as to whether you knew what you were buying.
Ranger, the company’s chairman, says it’s going well. What he wants to show me now, he says, is an app for storing all my personal data so that I have control over it myself.
He is a serial entrepreneur, adventurer and an aeronautical engineer who founded defence technology consultancy STASYS, which he sold to Lockheed Martin.
He set up an angel investment firm but has recently focused on Digi.me, previously known as SocialSafe.
He explains: “Digi.me returns control and ownership of personal data directly to you, the consumer. It creates ‘Your Library of You’ by aggregating all your data that is otherwise spread over the internet, and in business silos, into a personal library that you own and control and is 100% private. You may give permission for others to access and use that data but, be sure, the data is always yours.”
Ranger, who claims his app makes it possible for you to keep every bit of detail about yourself, produces a pack of cards, shuffles them and lays them out.
They’ve been adapted to show all the places my personal data may be stored — and used and possibly sold — from financial services to purchases to health to leisure.
He turns over the last card on the table. It’s the king of spades. On the back, there’s a quote: “The data we create about ourselves should be owned by each of us, not by the large companies that harvest it.”
The words are from World Wide Web pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
