Cuebiq Launches Market-First Solution that Independently Verifies Data Provenance, User Consent & Ensures Privacy Compliance
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Cuebiq enables users, partners, and customers to perform or request third-party validation of any Cuebiq product, as well as validate consent, while preserving user anonymity
Offline consumer intelligence and measurement company, Cuebiq, today announced the launch of its Cuebiq Consent Management and Data Provenance (CMDP) solution, which will enable publishers and advertisers to provide verifiable proof of their compliance with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) in relation to the Cuebiq products and services they use.
The Cuebiq CMDP uses blockchain technology enabling users, partners, and customers to provide proof of consent and data provenance across all Cuebiq solutions. With a simple request, any participant in the network can request an objective third-party validation of any data collected or product delivered by Cuebiq.
As a result, Cuebiq will also enable its Publisher partners to offer advertisers CCPA-compliant audiences for targeting. This innovation shifts the paradigm for data providers moving from a model based on self-reported compliance to an auditable, immutable, and verifiable data provenance and consent management framework.
“Currently, data providers are self-certifying their compliance, which erodes consumer trust and puts many apps and advertisers at risk for privacy, brand safety and regulatory issues,” said Antonio Tomarchio, founder and CEO, Cuebiq. “Self-certification is simply not a viable solution. We are strongly committed to advancing the industry’s expectations of privacy compliance, beyond what is required by regulatory bodies, and Cuebiq’s CMDP sets a high bar for data provenance standards going forward.”
Concerns around data collection and consumer privacy issues have been worsened by malicious actors exploiting the data of everyday users, casting a negative light onto the entire location intelligence industry, as well as the often-inadequate attempts to solve compliance problems, based on easily corruptible self-reporting or qualitative surveys. On the other end, advertisers suffer from lack of transparency in the data supply chain, putting themselves at risk of buying low quality products created with improperly collected data.
Among the companies supporting Cuebiq’s initiative are real-time fuel pricing app, GasBuddy and Nasdaq, the exchange operator and technology company.
Via a proof-of-concept (PoC) arrangement, Nasdaq will serve as a trusted, independent technology vendor. The blockchain-based solution represents a technology collaboration between Cuebiq and Nasdaq to verify data provenance and privacy compliance while allowing for third party validation.
“We will contribute to the development of the Cuebiq CMDP as an independent market technology provider,” said Scott Shechtman, Head of New Markets, Nasdaq. “When we decided to invest in Cuebiq through Nasdaq Ventures, we were motivated by the potential to bring solutions and services that strengthen the integrity of the world’s markets to a new industry vertical. Cuebiq’s position as a media-agnostic provider of anonymous location intelligence makes them an ideal partner with whom we can leverage our blockchain-based technologies to further drive data privacy efforts.”
“The current market lacks transparency and certainty on the source of user data. Furthermore, it lacks a reliable solution to authenticate that a user consented to share their location data,” said Sarah McCrary, CEO, GasBuddy. “Cuebiq CMDP is an exciting solution that will enable apps and publishers like us to be confident in the provenance of the data and ensure privacy compliance.”
Cuebiq’s CMDP solution works unobtrusively to verify data provenance. When a user provides consent to data collection, via one of Cuebiq’s app partners, a privacy-preserving record of consent is sent directly from that user to an immutable ledger. The validity of these consent records can be verified by all participants in the network without revealing the identity of the user.
Underpinning the solution are smart contracts (transparent, self-executing contracts, that transfer valuable information without the need of a central authority or intermediary) that ensure that Cuebiq only delivers its solutions with data from users whose consent can be verified on the ledger. Once the product is delivered by Cuebiq, proof that it was created in a compliant way is then also sent to, accepted and recorded by a smart contract on the blockchain ledger. The result is that Cuebiq customers making an information or product request can be fully assured that the data they use is always GDPR and CCPA compliant.