Disconnect for Privacy Online
October 22, 2013
Interesting. If this works as advertised, we may no longer need to keep track of which search engines track users and which don’t: Disconnect Search promises to decouple your information from all of your searches. This development is a new addition to the Disconnect site, which already offered a browser extension to protect privacy while surfing the web. The video on the homepage, just over a minute long, describes their services. Their About page tells us:
Why Disconnect
Your personal info should be your own. But today thousands of companies invisibly collect your data on the Internet, including the pages you go to and the searches you do. Often, this personal data is packaged and sold without your permission.
What we believe
Understanding online data collection and controlling access to your personal info should be easy. You should be free to move about the Internet without anyone looking over your shoulder and without fear that your online activity might be analyzed, your searches scrutinzed, or your security compromised.
You can use Disconnect by going through their site, or you can install their tool in your address bar. They also offer a Wi-Fi encryptor to protect data shared with other sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Twitter, and Google‘s ecosystem. Another tool is called Disconnect Kids, though its features seem like they would appeal to adults as well. This tool specifically prevents data about activities performed on iPhones and iPads from leaving those devices.
Check out the site for more details on how Disconnect works. The company was founded in 2011, and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. They say their top priority is to facilitate change in the way personal information is handled online. Disconnect proudly sports their B Corp certification, and functions on contributions.
Cynthia Murrell, October 22, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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