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Re: [projectvrm] VRM tool characteristics


Chronological Thread 
  • From: Joe Andrieu < >
  • To: Gon Zifroni < >
  • Cc: Project VRM < >
  • Subject: Re: [projectvrm] VRM tool characteristics
  • Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 14:51:15 -0700

I think this outlines some of the challenges for using fourth party as a defining term for VRM.

---
3. only fourth parties get only temporary access to shares of your data
4. third and second parties never get access to your data, the second trusts the third and the third trusts the fourth.
5. fourth parties of your choosing share your data for you
6. only fourth parties can be polled on your behalf
7. fourth parties can not be third parties too
---

Actually, I think these are all wrong.

3: Anyone can get access to your data, if you let them. 2nd/3rd/4th. It's doesn't matter. 4th party implies a fiduciary relationship, an agent-client relationship, but that doesn't mean they are the only ones you give data to.  We all give data to Google and Facebook and Twitter today. They aren't fourth parties.

4: As per my answer to 3, but also 2nd parties may not trust the 3rd and the 3rd may have no relationship at all with a 4th.  Remember, 3rd party is just someone who operates on the platform of the 2nd party, e.g., 3rd party software like an app on your Android. That doesn't mean Verizon or Google trusts the app developer.

5: fourth parties might share data for me, or not. Facebook shares data for me, but they aren't a fourth party. They are a personal data store with their own distinct interest, which only occasionally overlaps with their users'.

6: Anyone can be polled on my behalf. Think of Equifax getting a credit report query or a DMV response from an insurance company. Neither DMV nor Equifax are fourth parties, but they are being polled to get data about me, and in a VRM world, under my permission.

7: Fourth parties are third parties, because third party just means they aren't the 1st or 2nd party in the primary transaction. Even in Real Estate, agents often take both pieces of the transaction, as both buyer's and seller's agents.  I think this is bad, but I think the distinction is much clearer if you discuss customer agents and vendor agents.

A number of us have been moving away from "4th party" as a term because it inspires exactly this sort of categorization of the roles, and yet we know lots of cases where the categorizations makes numerical sense without mapping to the important VRM considerations. Instead, at IIW and PII there seemed to be consensus that "agent" is a term well rooted in both the vernacular and law. As David Scott pointed out, there are still lots of variables in an agency relationship, and those variables can still cause problems, but "agent" is a framing of the desired relationship that builds on previous expectations rather than requiring a new framework to be fleshed out, as "4th party" does.

Also, as I've argued before, ultimately every enlightened company will see itself as a "4th party", as the champion of the user.  We've seen this happen with folks from Google who honestly and reasonably argued that Google's primary focus was helping individuals find things. No company wants to be seen as antagonistic to their customers, so every single one will find ways to paint themselves as serving the customer's needs first.  "Agent" offers a bright line against that encroachment while 4th party unfortunately allows a certain blurring of the line because it is a new word.

-j

.
Joe Andrieu

 
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+1 (805) 705-8651

On 6/16/2011 2:19 PM, Gon Zifroni wrote:
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Devon hi,

Yes and no, it seems to me like a potential leak. 

Since it is a construction built on trust, if you decide to trust a second (vendor) or third (platform, right?) party with the same privileges as the fourth party then yes, but you clearly entrust it with your data. Even if it is granular typically you'll have repeat interactions (subsequent or at a later time). 

i.e. By trusting the second or third party for that role of managing your identity (who you are) and data (what I do, who I know, where I am, where I go, what I like, what I buy, what I want, etc) you open up to tracking and profiling based on repeat exchanges (not just transactions I believe).

How did you see it though? I was also thinking of the PGP architecture.

Gon

On 16 Jun 2011, at 11:07, Devon Loffreto wrote:

Ill submit an edit:
First part #7 = 4th parties can be first, second and third parties, but can only authenticate one role per transaction.

Devon Loffreto


On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 9:18 AM, Gon Zifroni < " target="_blank"> > wrote:
Hi list, I've been following silently for the last year and took part in IIW 11 last year.

I'm not sure if I got everything right with the terminology, but from what I can synthesize it seems to me we're talking about a system like so:

In a VRM system...
1. your data is private
2. your data is yours
3. only fourth parties get only temporary access to shares of your data
4. third and second parties never get access to your data, the second trusts the third and the third trusts the fourth.
5. fourth parties of your choosing share your data for you
6. only fourth parties can be polled on your behalf
7. fourth parties can not be third parties too

Let me flesh this out a little bit further:
1. TOS, your data is your legal private property
2. You are the only one who has complete access to all of your data. Even if it is in the cloud, you are the only one authorized full access at any given time.
3. Only fourth parties are allowed to get and index only portions of your data, and you can set for how long that data is retained.
4. They can index it along with other people's data so they can be queried by third and second parties. The query is not a query for data but a query for matching people. The fourth party only returns to third parties the number of matching people not their identity nor data about them. Second parties can connect with first parties via the current fourth party.
5. In terms of data storage and indexing it is a federated system like email whereby you can choose your fourth party and have several for different kind of data if you choose for it, jsut like people have several email accounts.
6. see 4.
7. Fourth parties cannot make use of your data.

I'm not sure if this is exactly the logic but I thought, given the Google Wallet discussion (I think it'd be a mistake to let it aggregate, index and know about all of your transactions, see 7), that it is a good moment to zoom in and draft an architecture that by its nature keeps data private while maintining certain level of flexibility and performance. Disclosure: my background is in industrial design and architecture (housing). I moved to SF to start a LBS with a group of engineers.

I'm sure this can be further compressed into 3 or 4 basic rules that qualify any VRM system.

Gon

On 16 Jun 2011, at 03:29, Katherine Warman Kern wrote:

+1

Katherine Warman Kern
Thanks!

I had meant #4 to cover that, in the sense that "managing" one's data would include understanding it; but maybe that's not the case. Gotta think about it....

Doc

On Jun 15, 2011, at 3:44 PM, Jamie Smith wrote:

Thanks Doc, this is a great start.

Would you say that number 4 ('help customers manage') would include tools to analyse your own data?

Such tools might help you identify your own behavioural or commercial trends (for example by finding patterns in your travel expenses or your weekly shopping), and in doing so would help you better a) express intent (#3) and b) engage (#4).

I suspect that such VRM tools would not necessarily have to have this characteristic, but if they did, then I'd want it to be a separate and distinct characteristic from 'help customers manage' - perhaps along the lines of:

6. VRM tools help customers better understand their own data. This is helping the customer discover and expose new value in their own data sets, on their terms and for their own benefit.

Keen to hear your views.

Jamie

On 15 June 2011 19:07, Doc Searls < " target="_blank"> > wrote:
@jamiedsmith tweeted a pointer to Alex Bogusky's New Conscious Consumer Bill of Rights...



... adding "needs more symmetry of power for consumers though". 

Rather than critique or seek to improve Alex's Bill, I thought I'd post something we've needed for awhile: a list of characteristics shared by VRM tools. I did that here:


Here they are:

  1. VRM tools are personal. As with hammers, wallets and mobile phones, people use them as individuals,. They are social only in secondary ways.
  2. VRM tools help customers express intent. These include preferences, policies, terms and means of engagement, permissions, requests and anything else that’s possible in a free market (i.e. the open marketplace surrounding any one vendor’s silo or walled garden for “managing” captive customers).
  3. VRM tools help customers engage. This can be with each other, or with any organization, including (and especially) its CRM system.
  4. VRM tools help customers manage. This includes both their own data and systems and their relationships with other entities, and their systems.
  5. VRM tools are substitutable. This means no vendor of VRM tools can lock users in.
Suggestions and improvements welcome.

Doc













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