openPDS: A Privacy-Preserving Personal Data Store

With their built-in sensors, smart phones are at the forefront of personal data collection. However, personal data currently tends to be monopolized and siloed preventing companies from building innovative data-driven services. While there is substantial work on privacy and fair use of personal data, a pragmatic technical solution has yet to be realized. openPDS is a privacy-preserving implementation of an information repository which allows the user to collect, store, and give access to his data. Via an innovative framework for third-party applications to be installed, the system ensures that the sensitive data processing takes place within the user's PDS, as opposed to a third-party server. The framework allows for PDSs to engage in privacy-preserving group computation, which is used as a replacement for centralized aggregation.