Solving the problem of anonymity

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So, does the immutability of data transactions, which is an inherent property of distributed ledgers, make blockchain incompatible with Article 17 of the GDPR? Not necessarily. One alternative approach to address this issue is to use hybrid off-chain architectures for distributed data storage. Other alternatives suggest storing PII on users’ devices, creating metadata and hashes of this information, and referencing this local data using third-party servers or the blockchain itself. This creates varying levels of blockchain and GDPR compliance.

Furthermore, one alternative to meet the requirement of Article 17 is for all information and data covered by this article to be stored off-chain on distributed or cloud servers, with only the relevant hashes stored on the blockchain. The hashes would then serve as reference pointers to the off-chain data covered by the GDPR. The reference pointers are not the user data that the GDPR protects, but pseudonyms of the original data. The other database that stores the original data is not hong kong mobile database to the immutability issues that the blockchain provides. To comply with the requirements of Article 17, the service provider may erase the links between the blockchain hash pointers and the data stored on the off-chain distributed servers as soon as it receives a request to do so.

Perhaps the most interesting – and most controversial – article affecting the applicability of the GDPR to blockchain is Article 25, “Data protection by design and by default,” which concerns the methods of pseudonymizing stored consumer data.

In blockchain, the pseudonymization method is hashing. There are two main interpretations of this method in terms of Article 25. According to the first, since the data is pseudonymized but not anonymized, the data cannot then be considered personal. According to the other, the pseudonyms can still be linked to the original PII. It may be necessary to mathematically prove that a brute-force cyberattack to obtain off-chain data can be successful.