Our CEO and co-founder, Gal Ringel, was recently interviewed by Cybernews.

Gal Ringel, Mine: “there’s no such thing as a riskless internet, data breaches happen”

Tell us how it all began. What was the idea behind Mine?

We are three co-founders at Mine, who are concerned about data privacy, considering how easily our data can be used against us in many ways. At the end of 2017, we saw the GDPR being legislated and about to come into force later in 2018. Since sharing our data has become a requirement for anyone who wants to use and enjoy the internet to its full intent, we decided to make these rights accessible to everyone.

But for many years, privacy was always about building fences around consumers to keep their data “safe,” but no one wants to give up the internet to protect their privacy. We decided to change this by talking about data ownership and looking at data privacy online from a value-based perspective. And so we developed Mine – a smart data assistant that gives users transparency and choice over the data they share online.

Mine gives consumers the confidence to enjoy the internet and give their data to whomever they choose, to receive great experiences in return. We allow consumers to keep track of their digital footprint, discover which companies hold their personal data, understand the digital risk, and, if they want, send a deletion request (right-to-be-forgotten) to remove their data and keep their data only where they want it.

What is a digital footprint, and how can individuals discover their digital mark?

A digital footprint is a unique trail of data you leave behind while using the Internet. An example of a digital footprint could be your browsing history, search history, likes, text messages, tagged photos, and videos, simply saying anything that leaves a digital trace that can be linked back to you.

There are several ways you can check your digital footprint. You can start by searching your name in search engines such as Google and Bing and exploring the results. Another option is to use online tools like Mine that discover your digital footprint and tell you which companies hold your personal data.

Handling data reclamation cases must be a tough task for companies as well. Can you tell us more about how your Evidence solution helps businesses with privacy requests?

A big challenge of handling privacy requests is finding a way to quickly validate and verify the privacy requests.

To date, there hasn't been any standard for handling privacy requests. This situation resulted in cumbersome processes for companies and frustrated consumers who found it very difficult to take ownership of their data.

Based on our conversations with hundreds of companies, we have learned how difficult it is for companies to identify their users, determine the type of data interaction they had with their users, and locate the data sources from which to delete the user's data, all of which cause a huge waste of resources.

It became clear that more information about the user is needed for companies to streamline the process. To resolve this issue, we developed the Email Evidence by Mine, which standardizes consumer requests and reduces the time and resources that go in receiving and verifying privacy requests to a few simple clicks. Using our technology, companies can gain more context and understand their past email interactions with their users to help verify the user and validate their request faster.

This unique evidence tool that’s part of our PrivacyOps platform for businesses helps identify users, locate them in the company’s systems and create more efficient privacy processes. The Email Evidence includes proof of data collection, identification of the user, an indication of the user-company relationship, and more.

‍Read the entire interview on Cybernews.