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Review
. 2023 Jan 28;23(3):1477.
doi: 10.3390/s23031477.

Personal Data Stores (PDS): A Review

Khalid U Fallatah  1 , Mahmoud Barhamgi  2 , Charith Perera  3
Affiliations
Review

Personal Data Stores (PDS): A Review

Khalid U Fallatah et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Internet services have collected our personal data since their inception. In the beginning, the personal data collection was uncoordinated and was limited to a few selected data types such as names, ages, birthdays, etc. Due to the widespread use of social media, more and more personal data has been collected by different online services. We increasingly see that Internet of Things (IoT) devices are also being adopted by consumers, making it possible for companies to capture personal data (including very sensitive data) with much less effort and autonomously at a very low cost. Current systems architectures aim to collect, store, and process our personal data in the cloud with very limited control when it comes to giving back to citizens. However, Personal Data Stores (PDS) have been proposed as an alternative architecture where personal data will be stored within households, giving us complete control (self-sovereignty) over our data. This paper surveys the current literature on Personal Data Stores (PDS) that enable individuals to collect, control, store, and manage their data. In particular, we provide a comprehensive review of related concepts and the expected benefits of PDS platforms. Further, we compare and analyse existing PDS platforms in terms of their capabilities and core components. Subsequently, we summarise the major challenges and issues facing PDS platforms' development and widespread adoption.

Keywords: data vaults; internet of things; personal data management; personal data store; personal informatics.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Two levels of classification of Personal Data (PD) [15,16]. Level one involves volunteered data (intentionally created by a user), Observed PD (created automatically about a user), and Inferred PD (generated after computational analysis). Level two involves format, source, abstraction level, storage location and semantics, and functions of PD.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Similarities and differences between PDS platforms and Smart Home Platforms.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The evolution of the personal data store.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Analysis of the capabilities and architecture in PDS. (HAT [77], Mydex [78], PDV [81], Personicle [83], Meeco [84], MyData [28], OpenPDS [26], Webbox [87], Databox [38], SOLiD [88], Digi.me [89]).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Architectural components of the existing PDS platforms. (HAT [77], Mydex [78], PDV [81], Personicle [83], Meeco [84], MyData [28], OpenPDS [26], Webbox [87], Databox [38], SOLiD [88], Digi.me [89]).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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