# You get a receipt for groceries, why not data? > Right now, as an individual, you don’t and can’t really know, who has your data and what they are doing with it. This is leading to all kinds of problems:… - URL: https://datafund.io/blog/you-get-a-receipt-for-groceries-why-not-data/ - Published: 2019-09-09 - Author: Datafund - Tags: consent, general, privacy, gdpr, data-economy ![](/assets/blog/you-get-a-receipt-for-groceries-why-not-data/01.jpeg) Right now, as an individual, you don’t and can’t really know, who has your data and what they are doing with it. This is leading to all kinds of problems: from the most benign, like annoying ads, to very serious ones, like data breaches, extortion, (identity) thefts, voter manipulation, unwarranted government and private surveillance… The core issue with uncontrolled data gathering and sharing is that the more data some entity has about you, the more power it has to influence you. ## Ask for a data receipt What can you do about it? There are quite a few steps you could take and one of them is asking for a “receipt” for your data. The GDPR opened the door to this idea, that allows you to keep track of who has your data and what they are using it for. **The idea is this: when you go grocery shopping and pay at the counter, you get a receipt for the purchased goods.** You put the receipt into a shoebox at home, and at the end of the month you might have a look through the receipts , to see where your budget is spent. In the same way, when a company obtains some data from you, it should issue a receipt — what that data is, how it is using it, who it is sharing it with. ## Keep track of all your data ![](/assets/blog/you-get-a-receipt-for-groceries-why-not-data/02.jpeg) How to document this consent is what the [Kantara inititiative](https://kantarainitiative.org/confluence/display/infosharing/Consent+Receipt+Specification) has been working on. The main point is that you get a standardised “consent receipt” for the data you share. Efforts are under way to specify a more general data receipt and make it an internationally accepted standard. **With a standardised data receipt, individuals can gain the option of storing all the data receipts in a “shoebox”**, where they review them from time to time and decide if they are comfortable with how data about them is used. Of course, this will be done using software, to automate the process and make it as easy as possible. We would gain a “data sharing dashboard” of sorts. This dashboard can also have additional functionalities built on top of it — like revoking the given consents, asking companies for more detail about the data used, asking for the export of the data and so on. ## Support companies that treat your data fairly ![](/assets/blog/you-get-a-receipt-for-groceries-why-not-data/03.jpeg) The “receipt” is not required by law, yet. So it is still early days for the data receipt idea. But, more and more companies are adopting the concepts, as they see the potential gains — legal compliance and greater opportunities for data exchange. You should keep the idea in mind and support companies that issue such receipts! This way you can contribute to a more fair data society. By following the Kantara specification, [**Datafund** ](https://datafund.io/)has built a free and open-source [**data receipt software “suite”**](https://github.com/datafund/data-receipt), funded by the [Sitra](https://www.sitra.fi/en/) innovation fund, that allows companies to offer consent receipts to their customers. ## See how it works in practice To demonstrate how this would work in practice we’ve also built a free, private and decentralised file transfer, called [**Fairdrop**](https://fairdrop.xyz/). It’s designed from the start to have a special folder, where consent receipts are stored. Any consent receipts sent to you using above mentioned software will show up in your special folder. This functionality will be expanded on either by us or our partners, to allow for more needed features as the ecosystem evolves. Keep an eye out to learn what your data rights are and push with us for the data receipt to become a good practice for ethical and fair data exchange! **To learn more, you can follow us on:** - [**Email**](mailto:info@datafund.io) - [**Twitter**](https://twitter.com/DataFundProject) - [**Telegram**](https://t.me/DataFund) - [**Linkedin**](https://www.linkedin.com/company/datafund) - **or** [**subscribe**](https://datafund.io/) **to our newsletter!** --- [You get a receipt for groceries, why not data?](https://medium.com/datafund/you-get-a-receipt-for-groceries-why-not-data-cf55a8db81c2) was originally published in [Datafund](https://medium.com/datafund) on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story. --- *First published on [Medium](https://medium.com/datafund/you-get-a-receipt-for-groceries-why-not-data-cf55a8db81c2) on 2019-09-09.*