Incogni, a digital privacy company, has conducted a study into American and Chinese platforms that harvest sensitive data from Europeans. Despite alleged digital protective laws, these apps can bypass them.
Blockchain technology can solve these problems, but the dominant forces of the internet go in the opposite direction. It will be a hard fight.
Digital privacy violations in Europe
Since the earliest days, the crypto community has had a strong interest in digital privacy. Bitcoin was established to be reliable, anonymous and decentralized.
However, the internet in 2025 is a very different place than 2009. A select number of platforms controls a lot of traffic and they are all harvesting data:
Although Europe leads to legislation for personal data protection, the researchers of incogni reveal with regard to practices of foreign developed applications and how they handle data from European citizens. Applications developed by foreign entities can easily operate in gray areas that are wide open the personal data of EU and British citizens for access to third parties, ”Darius Belejevas, head of Incogni, told Beincrypto.
According to new research published by Incogi, large platforms in the US and China are involved in systematic violations of digital privacy. The government often investigates American social media appsAnd we can easily assume that China uses comparable methods.
The Incogni study was aimed at Europe and the conclusions about app-based data collection are quite amazing. Although the continent apparently has strict digital privacy laws, these foreign platforms control a large part of the data.
It is easy to imagine how this problem can be much worse in other regions.
Data collection in Europe. Source: Incogi
Can blockchain help?
So how can blockchain technology ensure digital privacy? Web3 applications such as Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI), Decentralized Identification Data (DIDS) and Tokenized Data market laces offer a model where users check information and selectively publish it via cryptographic evidence, thereby preventing bulk harvest and cross-border leakage.
Unlike centralized apps, blockchain systems keep verification locally and transparent. By embracing the origin of crypto as a radically decentralized system, citizens in the UK, the EU or another country may be able to protect their digital privacy.
However, this optimistic scenario seems very unlikely. Cyber security experts are worried about a trend in crypto -wamid: what is a warning if nobody succeeds?
These platforms probably not only allow huge numbers of users to show off their data collection methods. Privacy-oriented enthusiasts may have to build parallel structures.
Can it replace messages, entertainment, social media and more on blockchain -based platforms? These replacements would require an important acceptance of users -a messaging app where you cannot send anyone, a streaming -app without content, and so on, would be useless.
Obstacles imposed by the government
Such as the recent American plan to place economic data on the blockchain, motivated governments are able to use this technology for powerful new use cases.
If this type of plan had a real buy-in from EU governments, privacy experts could force these platforms to allow OBFUScation technologies based on blockchain.
There is only one question: are EU governments interested in digital privacy? Mica regulations suggest that they are not, but other recent incidents provide further evidence.
The Online Safety Act (OSA), the attempt by Great Britain to verify the digital age, has proved horribly unpopular and even profitable criticism of human rights.
It requires websites to specify any pretension of digital privacy and to check the identity of each potential user before they have access to the platform. It seems that the EU tests comparable requirements.
In short, the prevailing headwind of the internet does not give in favor of digital privacy. Dedicated developers can build solutions based on web3, but it will be a long and tough fight. Yet blockchain technology is the best way to realize this dream.