Tech Firm in Israel States it can Delete Digital Footprints

In recent news, three citizens of the State of Israel, who were formerly a part of the military cyber units, have figured out a way to locate the digital footprint of every person on earth. In addition, they claim that they have found tools that can help anyone get rid of their past history forever. The firm, Mine, has been co-founded by Gal Golan, Kobi Nissan, and Gal Ringel. According to the owners, it makes use of artificial intelligence to point users in the direction of where their relevant information is being kept. For example, they are informed of whether an online retail store kept their data after they purchased a pair of sneakers four years ago.

According to Ringel, the technology developed by Mine has already been employed by no less than one million people across the globe. He added the more than 10 million people have requested various companies to give them the right to remove their existence, through the platform of the firm. Mine was launched shortly after the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union laid out several rights for users. With the GDPR now being an international point of reference, it has incorporated the right to deletion of private and personal data that was provided to a site for a specific purpose. Various AI technology scans run by the company displayed that it pinpoints the subject lines of the emails received by users to track where the data is being kept. 

Consequently, individuals can decide which information they want to keep and which data they want removed. They can then proceed to use the email template provided by Mine to go through with their right to be forgotten. With a simple click of a button, they can get rid of their entire existence online on any particular website. Ringel further added that Mine is not telling people to stay away from Google or Facebook. Rather, they are telling people that they can do whatever they want on the internet and see exactly what people know about them. In the words of the co-founder, this can help people understand the risk associated with the information they have placed on the internet. 

Consequently, users can mitigate that risk by removing the data present. Just last year, hackers took to breaking into the database of an Israeli dating website dedicated to the LGBTQ community, Atraf. As a result, personal and private information of the users then became a source of extortion. A year before that, a major insurance company, Shirbit, had been hacked and troves of information had been stolen. Despite these events and a couple of smaller breaches occurring throughout, Naama Matarasso Karpel of Privacy Israel, an advocacy group, stated that the people of the country are relatively indifferent to these hacks. She added how the privacy legislation of the Jewish state is inadequate for dealing with any online challenges that may arise these days. 

According to her, the country needs to educate the people regarding their privacy rights to ensure that they are not caught off-guard in the future.