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Welcome to our personal data ecosystem mapping project!

Why PersonalData.IO?

The goal of PersonalData.IO is to be an integrative toolbox for addressing surveillance capitalism.

We have all lost control over our personal data, yet we have no space where we can collectively reclaim it. We want to encourage a collaborative dynamic around mapping of the personal data ecosystem, together with some tooling helping push cutting edge data and services into the hands of activists, researchers, educators and more generally civil society.

When you contribute to PersonalData.IO, you improve some nice visualisations of the ecosystem, as well as making Subject Access Requests more precise.

Who is behind this?

This project was founded by Paul-Olivier Dehaye and has one employee.

It is financed in part by:

• private donations;
• the Data Transparency Lab; and
• Open Society Foundations.

What do we do?

We act at two levels:

• top-down, offering visualisations of data ecosystems, and the tools to collectively improve them;
• bottom-up, offering tooling to act on these networks, anchored in individual legal rights.

We also aim as much as possible to integrate the two levels: individuals exercising their rights should be informed by the latest research on the data ecosystems, and should be able to contribute back their expertise.

We are always looking for new contributors!

Visualizations

These are some of the visualizations we are building together.

Ecosystem	Topic	Visualization	Main item	Visualization method
Adtech ecosystem	routes your personal data takes when you browse the web	Where is my personal data going	Example
Elections	how political parties, social media services and voters connect through personal data
Disinformation	how disinformation blends into our information ecosystem	[1]
Example	Example	Example

Elections

Visualize how political parties, social media services and voters connect through personal data

• Elections across Europe

• Cambridge Anaytica ecosystem

Platform economy

Visualize how companies, workers and customers connect through data

• Platform economy & Work

Mobility

Open up the personal data ecosystem for mobility services.

• Mobility

Scotland

• MyData Scotland ecosystem mapping

OpenGeneva

• OpenGeneva festival

Adtech

Information ecosystem:

• disinformation ecosystem
• Facebook tools

Individual data rights

Subject Access Requests are requests for access to your personal data. Youtube video explaining the process

Campaigns

Addiction

Investigate how digital services create addiction, through transparency on the data collection component of the addiction feedback loop.

• Digital services and addiction

Adtech

See Adtech campaign (Q397)

Feminism

This is not formal yet, but data protection could learn a lot from data protection.

Maintenance

Now moved to Maintenance