Patent Issued for Storage and maintenance of personal data (USPTO 11356430): ConsumerInfo.com Inc.

2022 JUN 28 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Dean, Michael John (Torrance, CA, US), Kapczynski, Mark Joseph (Santa Monica, CA, US), filed on November 16, 2017, was published online on June 7, 2022, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11356430 is assigned to ConsumerInfo.com Inc. (Costa Mesa, California, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “A person’s wallet is a valuable item that provides a single location for many items that are typically needed on a day-to-day basis. A wallet may contain items of financial value, such as cash, credit cards and other payment instruments. A wallet may also include personal information, such as identification cards, personal photos, and health insurance information. In addition, a wallet may contain information about relationships with merchants, such as shopping loyalty cards and coupons.

“Unfortunately, in order to hold all of the aforementioned items, a physical wallet typically contains numerous separate cards, which may be bulky or difficult to carry. Also, losing a wallet may result in significant inconvenience and expense. Existing digital replacements for wallets tend to be idiosyncratic and geared toward only one or a small number of products, making such replacements generally inadequate.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “In general, an electronic personal data locker system is described in which personal data is stored, organized, accessed, and/or maintained, among others activities. In an embodiment, the personal data locker system comprises multiple personal data lockers that each store different types of personal information and/or data of a user. The personal data lockers are established by the personal data locker system and may be integrated with mobile devices and/or computing environments (such as a hosted computing environment). In an embodiment, the personal data locker system may automatically identify and acquire personal data for storage in the personal data lockers. Personal data may be acquired from a user and/or third parties having information about the user. The personal data locker system may enable the sharing of the gathered data with third parties and/or may enable the user to set preferences for what data is to be shared with various third parties.

“In an embodiment, the personal data locker system may further provide convenience in providing personal data to third parties via a standard application programming interface (API) and/or a standard application programming language. The API may further enable third parties to automatically register and update accounts associated with the user by accessing personal data stored in the personal data locker system. The personal data locker system may further provide for security for the user by keeping records of access to the user’s data stored in the personal data lockers, and allowing the user to see what data is being shared. Further, the personal data locker system may enable the finding and/or calculating of user-related insights based on the gathered data through correlation, aggregation, and/or analysis of the user’s personal data. The user-related insights may comprise, for example, new facts about the user.

“In an embodiment, a computer-implemented method of providing third-party access to personal data stored in an electronic data locker is disclosed. The method comprises: under control of one or more computing devices configured with specific computer executable instructions, providing an electronic data locker, the electronic data locker configured to store personal data associated with a user and to be accessible over a computer network; receiving, from the user, an indication of particular items and/or types of personal data to be stored in the electronic data locker; storing, the electronic data locker, the indicated particular items and/or types of personal data; receiving, from the user, a third-party authorization that authorizes a third-party to access the electronic data locker for a particular purpose; providing, to the user, a unique identifier that is associated with the user and that may be provided to one or more third-parties; receiving, from the third-party, over the computer network, a request to access personal data associated with the user from the electronic data locker, wherein the request includes the unique identifier and an indicated purpose for the request; comparing the indicated purpose to the particular purpose; retrieving, when the indicated purpose and the particular purpose match, the particular items and/or types of personal data from the electronic data locker; transmitting the retrieved items and/or types of personal data to the third-party over the computer network; and logging access data associated with the request.

“In another embodiment, a computer-implemented method of providing third-party access to personal data stored in electronic data lockers is disclosed. The method comprises: under control of one or more computing devices configured with specific computer executable instructions, providing one or more electronic personal data lockers, each of said one or more electronic personal data lockers configured to store a particular type of personal data associated with a user, and each of said one or more electronic personal data lockers configured to be accessible over a computer network; receiving, from a third-party, over the computer network, a first request to access personal data associated with the user stored in at least one of the one or more electronic personal data lockers, wherein the first request includes a purpose for the first request; authenticating the third-party request, wherein authenticating comprises: identifying the third-party; and verifying the user has authorized the first request; retrieving the requested personal data from the at least one electronic personal data lockers; transmitting the retrieved personal data to the third-party over the computer network; and logging access data associated with the first request.

“According to an aspect, verifying the user has authorized the request comprises: under control of the one or more computing devices configured with specific computer executable instructions, receiving from the user an allowable purpose for the first request; providing to the user an internet ID associated with the first request; allowing the user to provide the internet ID to the third-party; receiving from the third-party the internet ID; determining that the allowable purpose matches the purpose included with the first request.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A computer-implemented method of providing third-party access to personal data stored in an electronic data locker, the method comprising: via one or more computing devices configured with specific computer executable instructions, providing an electronic data locker, the electronic data locker configured to store personal data associated with a user and to be accessible over a computer network; receiving, from the user, an indication of particular items and/or types of personal data to be stored in the electronic data locker; storing, in the electronic data locker, the indicated particular items and/or types of personal data; generating user interface data for presenting a user interface to the user, wherein the user interface includes: a plurality of third-party categories for which the user can select to authorize access to the electronic data locker; and a plurality of data categories comprising at least credit data and the personal data; receiving, from the user, a third-party authorization that authorizes a category of third-parties to access the electronic data locker for a particular purpose, wherein the particular purpose includes a type of product or service; providing, to the user, a unique identifier that is associated with the user and that is configured to be provided to one or more third-parties of the authorized category; receiving, from a third-party, over the computer network, a request to access personal data associated with the user from the electronic data locker, wherein the request includes the unique identifier and an indicated purpose for the request that includes a transaction of a product or service; determining that the third-party is included in the authorized category of third parties; comparing the indicated purpose to the particular purpose by comparing the product or service for the transaction with the type of product or service in the third-party authorization; retrieving, in response to determining that the indicated purpose and the particular purpose match, at least a portion of the particular items and/or types of personal data from the electronic data locker; transmitting the retrieved items and/or types of personal data to the third-party over the computer network; and logging access data associated with the request.

“2. A computer-implemented method of providing third-party access to personal data stored in electronic data lockers, the method comprising: via one or more computing devices configured with specific computer executable instructions, providing one or more electronic personal data lockers, each of said one or more electronic personal data lockers configured to store a particular type of personal data associated with a user, and each of said one or more electronic personal data lockers configured to be accessible over a computer network; receiving, from a third-party, over the computer network, a first request to access personal data associated with the user stored in at least one of the one or more electronic personal data lockers, wherein the first request includes a purpose for the first request, wherein the purpose includes a product or service for a transaction; determining that the third-party is included in an authorized category of third parties to access personal data associated with the user; determining that the product or service for the transaction is in an authorized category of products or services to access personal data associated with the user; authenticating the third-party request, wherein authenticating comprises: identifying the third-party; and verifying the user has authorized the first request; retrieving the requested personal data from the at least one electronic personal data lockers; transmitting the retrieved personal data to the third-party over the computer network; and logging access data associated with the first request.

“3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein verifying the user has authorized the request comprises: via the one or more computing devices configured with specific computer executable instructions, receiving from the user an allowable purpose for personal data requested by the first request; providing to the user an internet ID associated with the first request; allowing the user to provide the internet ID to the third-party; receiving from the third-party the internet ID; and determining that the allowable purpose matches the purpose included with the first request.

“4. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the purpose further includes at least one of: enrollment, eligibility, registration, ad targeting, loyalty point calculations, or social-networking activities.

“5. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, further comprising: via the one or more computing devices configured with specific computer executable instructions, receiving a second request, from the third-party, over the computer network, to access the personal data associated with the user stored in the at least one electronic personal data locker associated with the first request; determining whether the user has revoked authorization associated with the first request; and providing the requested personal data to the third-party when the user has not revoked authorization associated with the first request.

“6. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the access data comprises at least one of: the identity of the third-party, the date and time the requested personal data was retrieved, the personal data that was requested, the particular type associated with the at least one personal data locker, or the purpose for the request.

“7. The computer-implemented method of claim 6, further comprising: via the one or more computing devices configured with specific computer executable instructions, providing an interface configured to display the access data to the user and receive input from the user, wherein the interface allows the user to revoke authorization associated with the first request.

“8. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the particular type of personal data comprises at least one of: social media data, health data, professional data, credit data, or banking data.

“9. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the user authorizes the first request via at least one of: a software key, a software token, authentication data, identity data, a username and password, an encryption key, a digital signature, a hardware key, a hardware token, or a mobile device associated with the user.

“10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: generating a report based at least in part on the logged access data; and presenting the generated report to the user on an electronic device.

“11. The computer-implemented method of claim 10, wherein the report comprises at least one of: a visualization, a graph, a trend, or a total.

“12. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the method further comprises: scraping web pages provided by external third party services to gather the personal data associated with the user.

“13. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the method further comprises correlating the personal data in a first category with the personal data in a second category to determine a characteristic of the user.

“14. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the method further comprises receiving, from the user, data sharing settings control comprising a control setting to allow sharing of a first subset of the personal data, wherein a second subset of the personal data is not shared with third parties, wherein the second subset of the personal data does not include the personal data in the first subset.

“15. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the method further comprises receiving, from the user, data sharing settings control comprising a control setting to allow sharing of the personal data to third parties within a particular geographical region.

“16. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the personal data comprises a credit score.

“17. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the method further comprises displaying a table including prior access by third-parties of the personal data associated with the user.”

There are additional claims. Please visit full patent to read further.

URL and more information on this patent, see: Dean, Michael John. Storage and maintenance of personal data. U.S. Patent Number 11356430, filed November 16, 2017, and published online on June 7, 2022. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11356430.PN.&OS=PN/11356430RS=PN/11356430

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