4 Ways Blockchain Could Improve Internet Security
4 min readThe Internet is one of a kind since there is no centralized authority or management. Quick interchange of ideas and opinions is now possible for everyone accessing the Internet.
However, in recent years, a small number of substantial-tech corporations have increasingly offered internet services such as search engines and social networking platforms.
Many firms, like Google and Facebook, claim they are giving away their services for free. However, they collect enormous amounts of personal data and resell it to third parties for profit .Every time you use social media, browse the Internet or upload data to the cloud, they can track you.
The Internet is steadily morphing into the present banking system, which centrally monitors all transactions and utilizes that data to anticipate what people will buy in the future.
This form of surveillance has tremendous ramifications for the privacy of regular people worldwide.
In 2008, when it first appeared on the Internet, the digital currency Bitcoin intended to undermine the hold that huge, private organizations had over our online activities.
An essential problem with digital currencies was eventually resolved by academics when they found that organizations operating them don’t require central supervision in the same way traditional banks do.
This system’s basic concept is to make the whole network of users a bank collectively. This is done via blockchains.Every transaction completed on a blockchain is recorded in a tamper-proof ledger accessible to all parties involved.
The ledger is distributed in the sense that a synchronized copy of the blockchain is kept by each of the participants in the network and tamper-proof in the mind that every transaction in the ledger is locked using a powerful encrypting technique called hashing.
Since its inception more than a decade ago, we have just begun to scratch the surface of what this technology is capable of.One of its most useful applications may have been ignored by those who studied it: to make the Internet better for everyone.
Help Stamp Out Hate
Services like social networking, email, and cloud storage require users to authenticate themselves to service providers before using them.This may now be accomplished by creating an account with the service provider using a username and password you choose. A user’s identification can’t be confirmed at this time.
Because of the anonymity of social media sites like Facebook, anybody may set up a profile and use it to disseminate misinformation and incite violence.A digital certificate will be issued to each citizen after verifying their identity. A certificate may only be issued by an organization that knows your identity, such as your company, institution, or school.
If other organizations follow suit, we might store these certificates on a publicly accessible blockchain and build a secure record of every internet user’s identification worldwide.
Social media profiles may be connected to actual persons if their digital certificates could be used to identify them.To restrict outsiders from accessing a school’s social media groups, a credential given by the school might be required to join the group.
Always Remember Your Passwords
By pressing a symbol on their phone, Facebook users may request a one-time password (OTP). On the Blockchain, Facebook would search for the user’s digital certificate and send them an OPT.
The OTP will be encrypted, and only the intended receiver can decipher it.The user would then use their username and the OTP to log in to the service, removing the need to keep track of a password. Because the One-Time Password (OTP) varies with each login and is sent encrypted to your phone, guessing or stealing a password is significantly more difficult.
Use Your Phone to Vote
When it comes to voting, many people are either too busy or too apprehensive about attending the polls on election day. That may change if an online voting system were implemented. Because digital currencies like Zerocash are entirely anonymous and their transactions can be tracked on the blockchain, they may be used as the basis for a voting system.Without disclosing one’s identity, anybody may review the blockchain and verify the transfer of a particular token.
It’s possible that each candidate would receive a digital wallet, and every qualified voter would obtain a token. Voters use their smartphones to deposit a pass into the virtual wallet of the candidate of their choice. As long as fewer than or equal to the total amount of tokens issued, a poll is legitimate, and the candidate with the most tickets wins.
No More Data-Sharing Between You and Tech Companies
To make money, corporations like Google exploit people’s daily usage of search engines to compile patterns, construct profiles, and sell this information to marketing companies.
Incentives for search companies to sell users’ personal information would be reduced if they could be compensated in digital money for each search they conduct – potentially as little as one-tenth of a penny.
It would only cost one penny per day for someone to conduct one hundred searches, which is a little amount to pay for one’s privacy.It would be a tragedy if blockchain technology were limited to making internet transactions anonymous. The more I think about it, the more intriguing the possibilities seem.