Frequently Asked Questions

Permission.io is the leading provider of permission advertising for eCommerce.

The company has created the ASK Coin to enable individuals to securely grant permission and monetize their data on Permission.io and third-party e-commerce platforms. Advertisers reward shoppers with ASK for interacting with brands and content, building consumer loyalty and trust.

Permission.io’s mission is to help individuals all over the globe earn from their time and data.

Internet giants profit from your data without you being able to control or benefit from it. Your search, shopping, social data … big tech makes billions selling it to advertisers while you get nothing.

Permission.io is leading the next generation of advertising by transferring that value back to you. Now, individuals, not corporate behemoths, are rewarded for granting permission to engage with brands and content based on their personal data and preferences.

Shop & Earn is an eCommerce platform where you can shop knowing your personal information is respected and your engagement is valued.

The platform runs on ASK, our native cryptocurrency. ASK fuels an ecosystem of buyers and sellers interacting and transacting with each other on a permission basis.

Shop & Earn is the first of many opportunities for you to earn and spend ASK.

Anyone, anywhere in the world can shop on Permission. Some sellers, however, may not ship everywhere. A search will show you all of the matching items available for purchase. When you click on those search results, you will be able to determine if the seller can ship to you.

Permission is adding new merchants from all over the world every day.

By now it’s no secret that your time and data are extraordinarily valuable. Instead of giving your time and information away for free, get your piece of the pie by earning ASK on Permission.

And, unlike the most widely-used e-commerce destinations, Permission will NEVER share your profile information with ANYONE. That means you have control over WHO you do business with and WHEN you do it.

Finally, crypto was complicated … until now. Earning, HODLing, and spending crypto is easy with ASK.

Permission is a W3 solution to problems that are currently plaguing the e-commerce industry, namely lack of trust, transparency and declining ROI.

Permission merchants gain a reputation for valuing their customers’ time and private information, earning the confidence of their customers and developing relationships with each of them that grow stronger with time.

The Permission blockchain makes transparent what merchants are spending in ASK to reach customers … and the Permission Score ensures that those customers are real.

No. All data generated through Permission, regardless of source, is anonymized on the advertiser end. Permission will always know which data is tied to each person, for purposes of rewarding ASK Coins and ensuring interactions are compensated, but the advertisers will never be able to link it to an individual the same way they are able to elsewhere online.

The Permission Score is a dynamic, multi-attribute, behavioral-based algorithm of both users and merchants. The higher the Permission Score, the more valuable the user or merchant is to the Permission ecosystem and community and thus the higher the user’s earning potential.

You can earn ASK in multiple ways:

1. First, create an account at Permission.io.
2. Watch product videos as you browse and shop 10,000+ products from your favorite brands.
3. Refer friends and family. The more people you invite, the more you earn!
4. Note that anytime you complete an earn event, your ASK will appear in your Pending Balance until you’ve completed 2FA.

Once your account has been authenticated, your pending ASK balance will be moved to your Permission wallet.

All Permission community members have an interest in maintaining the integrity of ASK. The waiting period allows us to validate members and prevent fraud or abuse.

Fiat currency is inherently opaque and subject to manipulation. ASK, powered by the Permission Blockchain, provides financial transparency and increases the efficiency of conducting business globally.

100 billion.

No. ASK is a coin on the independent Permission blockchain. The Permission blockchain is a fork of Ethereum so ASK is much like Ether.

Transacting ASK on our own independent blockchain allows us to easily scale and avoid the congestion and fee volatility issues that plague other distributed ledgers.

The Permission Coin is designed to provide utility within the Permission Ecosystem and its applications. Individuals earn ASK for their time and data and as the ecosystem grows, individuals will be able to not only shop and spend ASK on the Permission Platform by purchasing both tangible and digital goods, they will also be able to connect with and engage other individuals through various “ask-permission-first” applications.

To learn more, please see our Permission Coin Economics paper.

We encrypt all data when we store it or when we move it. For user data, we implement a public key/private key infrastructure using AES 256. The private key is known only to the user.

You gain the ability to manually transfer ASK from pending to your wallet after verification of your identity. The minimum amount of ASK required in pending before it can be transferred to a user’s wallet is 50,000.

(2FA) is an added layer of security.

In order to access sensitive information such as your profile or your wallet, you will need to enter a PIN or token provided by an authenticator application.

Currently, we support Authy and Google Authenticator.

For advice on how to successfully verify your identity, please visit this article.

Yes. You can now spend your hard-earned ASK on products on our Shop & Earn store! Bookmark the Shop & Earn page for more product rollouts including gift cards, digital goods & discounts!

You can also spend your ETH and BTC on Shop & Earn.

Note that our development efforts include providing you with the ability to spend your ASK on other 3rd-party eCommerce sites that accept ASK.

Your Permission account includes a wallet for storing your ASK. Currently, you can withdraw your ASK to a Trezor-controlled wallet via the MyCrypto.com interface. We will be adding information about additional third party wallets once they are able to support ASK.

Here are instructions for how to withdraw your ASK to a Trezor wallet.

Metamask is a free and open-source browser based crypto wallet that is compatible with ASK.

Visit our GitLab site for instructions on how to configure your ASK Meatamask wallet.

Violations of our terms of use result in account suspensions.

For security reasons, we are unfortunately unable to provide you with the specific terms of use that caused you account suspension.

You are still able to access your private wallet key and can transfer your ASK to any other compatible wallet.

Your account may be disabled due to a violation of our Terms of Use. If you think that we made a mistake suspending your account, you may file an appeal to unsuspend your account. To do so, please complete the Suspension Appeal Form. We’ll review your appeal and will contact you at the email associated with your account.

It’s all about the data. BAT is in the privacy browser business. They don’t compensate users for personal data, nor do they collect it, so advertisements are not personal or relevant.

We are in the business of creating superior datasets that are integrated and permissioned. We help individuals monetize their data while also helping advertisers reach large-scale audiences in a highly targeted way.

We also have an enormous technology advantage. We have the ability to help individuals earn from their full and comprehensive data set,
Right now, your data lives in silos and applications. Google has your search data and Amazon has your shopping data.

Our Data Algebra technology is a fundamental breakthrough on how data can be integrated and analyzed. This is a huge competitive advantage.

Why is that important? Because it enables users to truly take back ownership of that data so that they can grant permission and then profit from it. We can put individuals at the center of the data economy.

It also enables advertisers to target the richest data resource possible, leading to significantly better ad campaigns and increased return on advertising dollars.

It is a novel application of set theory, an algebra that can be applied to the representation and manipulation of data. It was invented and tested for practical use by Permission.io.

They cannot be compared for several reasons, chief of which is that what is called “relational algebra” (created over 40 years ago by Edgar F. Codd while at IBM) is not mathematically sound and hence to call it an algebra is a misnomer. As such, “relational algebra” provides a means of manipulating data held in tabular, which, among other things, includes a set-theoretical anomaly (i.e. error): the null value. It has a limited area of application.

In outline Data Algebra could be described as follows:

The basic unit of data is a two-term couplet, such as (a, b).
A set of couplets is called a relation.
A set of relations is called a clan.
A set of clans is called a horde.

For a detailed mathematical explanation of these structures and their operators, please read the book The Algebra of Data, By Sherman and Bloor, or download a PDF version from our web site.

It can be used to represent any collection of data, and any part of that collection. It is complete in that there are no data structures that it cannot represent.

In respect of software, it can, for example:

• be used to carry out any data transformation. (A data transformation is simply a reorganization of data from a source structure to a target structure.)
• be used for querying. (Mathematically, a query is simply a function that is applied to a data collection of some kind, selecting parts of it.)
• be used for data virtualization.
• be used for query optimization.

In theory, it is not limited in its areas of application since Data Algebra could be applied in any context where data is manipulated.

Data Algebra has been applied to create, query, and manipulate the following data structures:

• Data caches and flat files
• Key-value stores
• Relational (i.e. table-based) database
• Document (i.e. noSQL) database
• XML database
• RDF database (or triplestore)

Permission.io is currently using it in a large data integration project called Permission QE. The goal is to use the PartiQL query language to access datastores in multiple distributed locations so that personal data can be integrated and analyzed.

Permission Query Engine.

It is a project to develop a data unification capability for analyzing permission.io’s users’ personal data.

It will not be an open-source project initially, but it may become an open-source project once an initial capability has been built.

No software exists that offers the broad data integration capability envisaged. The requirement is to retrieve data simultaneously from combinations of relational databases, NoSQL databases, and web APIs. While there are a variety of individual tools that can retrieve data from SQL-based, JSON, XML, and other formats, there is no single query tool that can unite data from them all.

It uses PartiQL (created by Amazon) because it can address both SQL and JSON data sources. Extensions to PartiQL’s capability will be added where necessary.

Data Algebra will be harnessed to integrate the disparate schemas of multiple data sources, to manage queries, and to compose the results. It may also be used for query acceleration and optimization capabilities, but if so, it will be included later, once the unified query capability has been established.

It will have a GUI and an API so that it can be used by individuals as a query capability or programmatically. The intention is to make the GUI capability available to Permission.io users.

A series of connectors will be built to provide access to specific data sources. They will include interfaces to common databases, such as MySQL and MongoDB. There will be interfaces to sites such as Facebook, and LinkedIn. A library of plugins for data sources will be assembled. Users (or programs via the API) will be able to access data stores to determine their content and then formulate PartiQL queries to access the data.

When the user composes a PartiQL query, it is passed to the Query Engine, which decomposes the query into subqueries, each of which targets a single data store. These subqueries are passed to the appropriate connectors which in turn connect to the data store and run the query locally. The results of the query are passed back to the Query Engine. When all of the results have been collected, the Query Engine combines them to create the query result.

Those who have been involved in AI/data science projects know that a great deal of the effort (80% to 90%) involved in the project is expended gathering and manipulating data. That is the primary purpose of PermissionQE. It will reduce data integration effort significantly. When data is retrieved, it will be used for creating standard analytics sandboxes to analyze Permission.io user data to enable accurate targeting by advertisers. Standard libraries of AI capabilities will be used for the analysis.

Permission.io’s Shop & Earn Store is a global e-commerce store that works with partners from around the world. Depending on a variety of factors along with the unpredictability of COVID-19 please allow two full weeks for your order to arrive. Some items in our store allow you to choose the country where they are shipped from. If an item is shipping to you from the country in which you reside, the delivery time will be faster, usually closer to one week.

Permission.io’s Shop & Earn Store is a global e-commerce store. Many of our items will be shipping from China and via various shipping companies. Due to these factors, along with the unpredictability of COVID-19, shipping times may vary and can take up to 4-6 weeks to arrive.

Nearly all items have free shipping. For those that do not, minimal shipping fees will be applied.

Our mission is to provide a wonderful shopping experience. Unfortunately, sometimes this means that items need to be returned. We will do everything we can to make the returns process as fast and as easy as possible. Our return policy is:

• Customer must contact us within 30 days of receiving item if they wish to return.
• All returned items must be in new condition with original tags attached.
• Failure to pay any kind of tax or fee imposed by the delivery country is not an acceptable reason for a return, and only a partial refund will be given in this situation. Every country is different, and occasionally it may be required that the user pick up the item from the local post office.
• Should a user become suspended after placing an order, their order may not be fulfilled and their ASK may not be refunded.
• Need to initiate a return? Contact us here – Request Return

Chances are that the package is still on the way. As we are a global ecommerce company, many items may take up to 4-6 weeks to arrive depending on various factors. Please check your tracking number that was emailed to you upon shipping confirmation or you may find it in the “My Orders” section (see the “My Permission” tab in the top right of the homepage for Shop & Earn).

If you didn’t receive an order confirmation, please first check your spam folder in your email. If it’s not located there, please navigate to the My Orders section on the My Permission tab in the top right of the homepage for Shop & Earn. If you still don’t see it, please submit a request and we’ll be happy to look into it for you.

Chinese users can interact with the platform just like the rest of the global community and can expect the normal shipping and delivery times that they are accustomed to in their everyday online shopping experiences.

Yes, you can now spend your hard-earned ASK on products on our Shop & Earn store! Bookmark the Shop & Earn page for more product rollouts including gift cards, digital goods & discounts!

Anyone, anywhere in the world can shop on Permission.io. Some sellers, however, may not ship everywhere. A search will show you all of the matching items available for purchase. When you click on those search results, you will be able to determine if the seller can ship to you.

Permission is adding new merchants from all over the world every day!

Traditional eCommerce sites don’t reward you for browsing and engaging with product ads.

On Shop & Earn, you can earn ASK while browsing our selection of 10,000+ products across 100’s of categories at very competitive prices. Earn ASK by watching entertaining product videos as you browse and shop!

As your ASK wallet grows, HODL or spend it on your favorite products on the site.

We are also now accepting your favorite payment methods on our store, including ASK, ETH, BTC, WeChat Pay, AliPay, Union Pay, Visa, MasterCard, AMEX, and many other options, you decide how you pay!

Yes. Any Permission user may refer their friends to earn more ASK. Both you and your friend receive +100 ASK for every referral. Navigate to the Referrals page of your user portal to get started. For referrers to receive their bonus ASK, the referee must complete identity verification.

Nope. You can refer as many people as you want and there is no limit to how much ASK you can earn by doing so.

There are lots of ways. First, go to the Referrals page of your user portal. Then do any of the following:

• Invite your friends directly via email, and include a personal note telling them why they should sign up.
• Use our ‘share’ buttons to post on your social media, so that everyone in your networks can help you earn.
• Give you referral code to a friend and have them enter it into their user portal after they create an account.
• Copy your personal referral link or QR code and share it however you choose.

Log in to your account and navigate to the Referrals page. From there, you will see a list of email addresses from each of your referrals. Next to each of those emails, you will see one of two things:

• A confirmation of how much ASK you earned for referring that person
• Or, the date that they were invited, meaning that they haven’t signed up yet

Above your list of people you invited, you can see the total amount of ASK that you have earned from referrals.

Yes. At the moment, our Ambassador Program is invite-only. You can increase your chances of being selected for our Ambassador Program though if you refer your friends, frequently engage on our social media channels, and share your Permission experience with others online.

Yes. If you are an influencer and wish to participate, please DM Permission.io though your largest social channel.

ASK can be purchased on the following exchanges:
Bithmub Global
ViteX
Please communicate directly with the exchanges for more information.

Yes, you will need to set-up an account directly with each respective exchange. We cannot help you with facilitating that. You can find links to the exchanges on our website.

We expect ASK to be listed on more exchanges in the future.