Tech giants join Data Transfer Project

New Delhi, July 20: To help billions of users manage their data and help them transfer that into and out of online services without privacy issues, four tech giants — Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter — on Friday announced to join the open source initiative called Data Transfer Project (DTP). In the early stages at the moment, the Data Transfer Project will help users of one service to use their data to sign up for another service with encryption. “Using your data from one service when you sign up for another still isn’t as easy as it should be. Today we’re excited to announce that we’re participating in the Data Transfer Project,” said Steve Satterfield, Privacy and Public Policy Director at Facebook in a statement.

The initiative comes at a time when data-sharing is making headlines — be it the massive Cambridge Analytica data scandal or third-party apps accessing users’ data at various platforms — amid countries announcing new data-protection laws like the European General Data Regulation Protection (GDPR). Moving data between any two services can be complicated because every service is built differently and uses different types of data that may require unique privacy controls and settings.

The Data Transfer Project uses services’ existing APIs and authorisation mechanisms to access data. It then uses service specific adapters to transfer that data into a common format, and then back into the new service’s API. According to Google, the project will let users “transfer data directly from one service to another, without needing to download and re-upload it”. The tech giants also released a white paper on this project. (IANS)