Project Idea | Liberate Yourself Vault (LYV)

Project Title: LYV – Liberate Yourself Vault

One Line Introduction: LYV provides user a secure vault to store private data and disseminate it based on certain conditions to certain contacts using certain means.

Motivation: To make sure that information is not lost while being private(in case of a mishap with the owner of the information), a vault should be in place to keep the data and information and release it after a certain time when the conditions to release the information are met.

Introduction: In today’s times of so much surveillance and vulnerability to the privacy of an individual, no one, and nothing can be trusted with the most private data. You have Google reading your emails, drives being monitored, the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal and countless other such snooping continuously going on the data of an individual that failed to come to notice. Physical storage of data can’t be trusted due to the inherent vulnerability of the storage medium.
Thus, data needs to be protected physically and digitally.
Also, in the event of any mishap with an individual, it is imperative that this data be provided back to his loved ones.

Conceptual framework: LYV aims to provide a robust, secure and customisable data storage platform where the user can store his/her most private data like email credentials, mobile’s password, social media account’s credentials, images, videos, audios, wills, private journals and any other type of data imaginable.
A user will be allowed to choose legacy contacts(emails, mobile numbers, contact address) and the conditions to meet before the release of information. Upon meeting these conditions, the user’s data will be made available to the legacy contracts.

lyv block diagram of components

Components:

• Login/Signup
• Choose Conditions (Choosing conditions under which transfer of data takes place)
• Choose legacy contacts (initially email, later to mobile, physical courier, face to face transfer)
• Choose way of transferring data (initially emailing the zip file or uploading to a secure drive and providing the access to LYV account with no ‘write’ access)
• Manage credentials (multiple passwords and authentication options)
• Selective transfer of data (manage what data to send to who)

Features

• Slick UI.
  
  

  dashboard wireframe png

• Multiple passwords(Initially one but other two can be activated)
  • Normal/Standard for normal authentication.
  • One for deleting or locking the account indefinitely(when someone is forcing the user to open the account to look at the data).
  • One for opening the account but showing nothing in it.
  

  manage password section png

• Easy and secure auth
  
  

  lyv auth

• An interface to choose the legacy contacts.
  
  

  manage legacy contacts png

• An interface to allow the user to select the time after which data release needs to take place. If within this time, the user has not logged in and reset the timer, the data would be released. If the login does happen, the timer would reset.
  
  

  information transfer conditions png

• A vault which stores the information that the user uploads or creates.
  
  

  vault wireframe png

• Initially, the ways to release information would include options such as uploading to secure drive, email the zip folder or redirecting to LYV portal while canceling the ‘write access’ to the data. This section would later be expanded.

Tools used

• mLab
• Node.js
• ExpressJS (for web framework)
• ‘Endcrypt’ npm package for E2E encryption (for data streams)
• ‘Tunnel SSH’ npm package for secure connections
• MaterializeCSS (for front end design).

Data Structure and Document References




data references png

Control Flows

User Flow for a new user




new user control flow

Legacy Contact User Flow




legacy contact selection control flow

Applications

• In life insurance policies as an addition to secure the data of the policy holder besides life.
• For people to write private journals. Effective for book-writers to protect Intellectual Property(unfinished books).
• Storing digital credentials in case of death or any other uncertain incident and releasing it later on.
• Enforcing privacy.

Note: This project idea is contributed by Parikshit Hooda for ProGeek Cup 2.0- A project competition by GeeksforGeeks.