

Life Management Platforms (LMPs) combine personal data stores, personal cloud-based computing environments, and trust frameworks. They allow individuals to manage their daily life in a secure, privacy-aware, and device-independent way. In contrast to pure personal data stores, they support concepts which allow interacting with other parties in a meaningful way without unveiling data. This concept of ‘informed pull’ allows apps to consume information from the personal data store as well as from third parties, and to use that information for decision making, without unveiling data to any of the other parties. Think about comparing offers for insurance contracts or think about pulling articles from various sites for a ‘personalised newspaper’ without unveiling the full list of current interests. The problem with sharing data is: ‘Once it's out, it's out of control’. Even with more granular approaches on sharing data, the problem remains – once data has left the personal data store, the individual has no grip on that data anymore. LMPs thus go beyond that, by new concepts of sharing information with security and privacy in mind, but also by relying on trust frameworks. The latter are, for instance, important to rely on a set of relations and contracts once it comes to sharing data – and there is no way to fully avoid sharing data. Once a decision about the preferred insurance company has been made, there needs to be a contract. Some data has to flow. However, defined contracts can reduce the risk of abuse for that data. The chapter explains the need for LMPs, the underlying concepts, and potential benefits. It also looks at some real-world use cases.