10 Facts About Data portability

Data portability is a concept to protect users from having their data stored in "silos" or "walled gardens" that are incompatible with one another, i e closed platforms, thus subjecting them to vendor lock-in and making the creation of data backups or moving accounts between services difficult.

Data portability requires common technical standards to facilitate the transfer from one data controller to another, such as the ability to export user data into a user-accessible local file, thus promoting interoperability, as well as facilitate searchability with sophisticated tools such as grep.

Some mobile apps restrict data portability by storing user data in locked directories while lacking export options.

European-level Article 29 Data portability Protection Working Party held a consultation on this in English lasting until the end of January 2017.

An association proposed to have a right to data portability anchored in the constitution of the Swiss Confederation.

Related searches

Data portability is included in the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019 about to become law as section 26 in chapter VI.

Right to data portability is enshrined in the new data protection law under clause 34.

Data portability right is slightly different from the Right of access to personal data; see GDPR and the seventh item in the list cited immediately above.

Data portability right is related to the "right to explanation", i e when automated decisions are made that have legal effect or significant impact on individual data subjects.

Later in 2017 data portability was analysed by professors of data protection as a central innovation of the new GDPR.