News
Most consumers want to remove information about themselves online, but a third don’t know how
April 2020 by Emmanuelle Lamandé
A new Kaspersky-backed service will help users retrieve and delete their personal data from organisations. This is in light of a recent Kaspersky report, which revealed that 82% of people have tried to remove information about them that has become publicly available on websites or social media, yet 37% of them don’t even know how to do it. The new platform, Undatify, simplifies the complex process of communicating with organisations about one’s personal data. In just a few clicks, people can send requests to obtain or delete their data under GDPR.
The new solution, which acts in accordance with GDPR and other privacy laws, allows people to easily communicate with organisations about their personal data and request a copy of all the data held about them, as well as ask for it to be deleted, if needed. In some cases, this is as easy as filling out a special web form from the relevant organisation. To help guide individuals through this process, Undatify has presented a tool called Legal Bot.
Using Legal Bot, people can select an organisation to contact from Undatify’s catalog of popular services or add one of their own. The user then decides if they would like a copy of their data or to have the organisation erase it. Legal Bot then generates a formal request that can be sent through the interface.
After receiving the organisation’s response to the request, Legal Bot enables machine learning algorithms to analyse its content and provide the user with suggestions on next steps. For example, if the company disputes the individual’s request, Legal Bot suggests additional argumentation options to address the specific rationale behind the case. Legal Bot can then provide the user with custom recommendations throughout the entire communication process with the company.
Mikhail Podlasov, Head of Undatify said: “Taking care of our privacy is becoming a challenging task, as many modern services request a lot of personal details, and we cannot fully control the distribution of our data on the internet. It can also be quite problematic to clean up one’s digital footprint. While it might only take a couple of clicks to remove details from some websites and services, it can be trickier in other cases to find out how to do it and take more time than necessary. With the help of Undatify, people can take back control of their data in a fast and efficient way.”
The new service is currently in a beta version and only available in English. However, more languages, including French and German, will be added in the near future. The solution is now available in a web-based version, with mobile versions planned to be introduced.
