Why Known Privacy?
We started Known Privacy to fix a big problem: our personal data is being collected and used at a staggering scale.
Each of us are tracked, surveilled and profiled by hundreds of companies, most of whom we’ve never met.
The data is used in all kinds of ways we don’t understand and it has actual, real-world impacts on our lives.
It’s creepy.
Actually, it’s not just creepy. It’s wrong. It’s not ok that our data is harvested and used to affect our lives without our knowledge or consent.
When we first realized how big this problem was, we thought: someone will address this. Someone will do something about how our data gets used. This system is too flawed to continue on.
After years of watching this system grow, we realized that it wasn’t going to fix itself. No one was coming up with the answer to stop all the creepy tracking and profiling.
So then we thought: we better do something about this. So we started Known Privacy.
And then we came up with the answer. We know how to fix this broken system.
The Solution
There are two root problems with the current system, which is best described as the Surveillance Economy or Surveillance Capitalism.
Problem #1: We have no transparency into what is happening: who collects our data, what our profiles look like, who they sell our data to, how much they sell it for, and most importantly, how it is used.
More simply put: we don’t Know what is happening with our data
Problem #2: We have no control over the data about us. Automated decision making systems are governed by algorithms and Artificial Intelligence. These systems are increasingly playing a role in our everyday lives.
They determine the prices we get, the jobs we get, the content we see, the credit terms we are offered, and how we experience the digital world. These systems are powered by our data, which we have no control over.
More simply put: We do not Own our data. We do not control it.
But what if we could?
If we could Know how our data is used and could Own and control our data, we would have our privacy back. Know + Own = Known Privacy.
Solving these two problems gives us our privacy back.
But we can’t do it alone. We need help. Your help. What are you going to do preserve your privacy?
To beat this system, we are going to need a lot of people to tell the privacy story. We need a lot of people to sign up for our three services:
The Opt-Out Machine
The Identity Manager
The Data Exchange
The good news: if we are successful, we all get to make money doing it. Who knew that we could both fix privacy and get paid to do it at the same time?
We think that’s pretty cool. We hope you do too.
John Ruder
Brendan Roberts
