IT Week: You have just founded a new company called Garlik, which promises to help consumers protect their information and privacy. What services will it offer?
Tom Ilube: We aim to give consumers power and control over their personal information. Looking at the market, it is obvious no one is really standing up for the mainstream consumer. We help individuals to become aware of the information out there and whether it presents a risk to their identity, and we tell them what actions they could take to reduce that risk.
How will consumers' privacy rights affect UK businesses?
Companies should think about what they would do if consumers became more assertive over their personal information. Under data protection laws I have the right to submit a data access request and a company has to respond in 40 days. Typically someone in the legal department pulls the information and sends it back, but if consumers decide they would like to know [about how their details are being used] on a greater scale, it would be a challenge to most organisations to respond to that.
Do you think consumers will grow more assertive in determining how their personal information can be used by companies?
Yes, this issue is growing and growing. There is now at least 10 times as much data in the public domain as there was five years ago and [consumers] do not feel comfortable about it. This development also means organisations need to be clearer about whether the personal information they hold belongs to them or their customers, because otherwise corporations may find themselves in a dilemma as individuals become more vocal.
Will firms benefit if they respond more efficiently to data requests?
Relationships with customers will be strengthened if an organisation becomes more transparent; people will be much more comfortable if firms share that information. Consumers do not have a feeling of complete openness at the moment; the response [from organisations] is often to clamp up.
You use so-called semantic web technology, designed to make it easier for computers to process information. How will this develop?
We're doing it because we believe over time the web will move in a more semantic direction, so we thought it would be better to build an integrated system that is semantic-ready – because it would be difficult to shift over if we built our system in the traditional way using relational databases.
How does this technology currently support your business?
In order to give customers a clear picture of what digital information there is available about them we need to draw together data from a range of sources and present it to them. Doing that using semantic technology hides a lot of complexity, and gives the data a common meaning and definition.
About Tom Ilube
Tom Ilube is founder of Garlik, a company that aims to give consumers more control over their personal information.
Until recently Ilube was chief information officer and a member of the executive committee at online bank Egg.
Ilube's technology career spans 20 years, including jobs at The London Stock Exchange, Cap Gemini, Goldman Sachs, BA and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
