Gilbert Hill
Privacy Technologist
After studying Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University, Gilbert founded a software agency building web and mobile solutions. Becoming fascinated with the relationship between user experience, data and compliance, Gilbert pivoted this into a product for website owners to discover, manage and disclose their use of tracking cookies. Most recently Gilbert was CEO and Advisor to Tapmydata, a start-up building consumer-grade tools for people to exercise data rights, with blockchain keeping score. Gilbert is a Fellow and Senior Tutor on Privacy and Ethics at the Institute of Data and Marketing, and regular contributor to events and media in the UK and internationally.
Privacy ‘in real life’. How can technology move from products to people?
Most of the data in the world now was created in the last two years, driven by wearables and COVID which bounced a whole new raft of the population online, and with increasing intimacy.
Despite GDPR’s arrival, the balance of power is still firmly with organisations who treat our data as an ‘asset’ and people as ‘users’ (the only sector outside illegal narcotics which uses this description).
Tapmydata built a set of tools for people to find and exercise control over their data. This was a major challenge for us as technologists as we had to ‘un-learn’ common practice and apply the principles of Privacy by Design in practice, while keeping the lights on!
Two years later, with the largest knowledge base in the world currently on data requests, I can share the results plus insights from a series of recent interviews with people outside the ‘privacy village’ around their data, rights and how current platforms affect the way they behave online.
With 2021 already at a tipping point in terms of data scandals and consumer activism, I hope to show how an ethical, humane approach can move us all beyond compliance, towards data dialogue.