We’re Crumbs and we’re here to improve your privacy on the web
Why privacy should be seen as a basic right
The current state of things
The web is a great place to do just about everything, whether it’s meeting friends from all over the world, connecting with like-minded people, shopping, watching movies, exploring new artists, or any of the seemingly limitless offerings available. But did you know that whatever you do online you leave little traces of data behind that advertisers might use to identify you? Yes, you individually!
It might not be news for you, but whenever you visit a certain website it immediately places a so-called cookie in your browser. These cookies help websites to identify recurring visitors, to remember login information and to keep track of information such as items saved in a virtual shopping cart. Thus, cookies are not a bad thing per se, and in many cases, they may even be able to improve our web experience. But once a website has this information, depending on what you gave your consent to (and in some cases without your consent), it might also share it with other websites or networks, and all of a sudden, loads of websites you’ve never visited have all of this data on you. At that moment you lose any semblance of control over your privacy, because once the information is shared without your awareness, other websites have the opportunity to create new profiles on you.
So clearly it’s no joke when marketers talk about how data is the new oil. However, thanks to the likes of Edward Snowden and Google’s announcement to eliminate third party cookies from their Chrome browser, users’ awareness is beginning to rise, with many learning about new ways they can stay in control of their data.
Privacy-preserving tools like Crumbs are here to assist users who enjoy the convenience of allowing their favorite websites to remember their browsing behaviour and login info, yet, don’t want this information shared with a dozen other websites without their consent. It’s your data, right? So shouldn’t you be the only person controlling who sees this information? It should be part of your free will to decide what you want to share, so while keeping everything to yourself might sound appealing, not sharing anything could result in a loss of convenience and other capabilities that enhance your online experience. However, in a healthy value exchange, you should be in control of your data, hence your behaviour, preferences, and personal data should not be information that gets scattered around at the drop of a dime.
The giant market hall, and the need for balance
One of my favorite ways of thinking of the internet is of a gigantic market hall which is always open and has every product that you could ever think of. Visitors can enter for free, and there is a ‘special offer day’ every day of the week, and to make it even better vendors give out free cookies, because everyone loves free cookies, right?
The vendors are clever, and they want to sell you their best goods, so with the help of these cookies, they are able to track you while you browse through the different market booths. These trackers might collect information on you such as your name, your gender, your income, number of kids, and what you generally like to buy on the market. But imagine if the vendor whose cookie you accepted now knows a few things about you, and then shares what they know with the other booths in their location, and all of a sudden many vendors know the things about you that you only wanted your favorite vendor to know. Now, they all start screaming your name and you realize you should never have accepted the first cookie, because you didn’t want this to happen!
This scenario is of course an exaggeration, just to show that data collection is happening whenever we’re online, and that it could be a good idea for users to have the control over what it is they’re willing to share. After all, Cookies and advertising have their purpose, and allow content creators, publishers and companies to get financial reimbursement for their works, works that we users like to consume for free. It’s all part of the balance of an open internet, where quality information is accessible to as many people around the world as possible. The ad-based web is the most viable compromise to date.
Here’s an example, from Crumb’s UI of the information that a website can collect and share, allowing them to identify you as a person of specific attributes and thus improve ad targeting.
You can see that we take your information and anonymize it so advertisers can’t identify you as an individual. You get anonymity and protection from tracking, and can control what information you do share and what you want to keep to yourself. At the same time, you’re allowing the internet to remain free, thereby enabling content creators to monetize through ads, so they are able to create quality content and keep it from disappearing behind paywalls and subscription services.
We’ve learned from our experience at eyeo, developer of the ad-filtering technology that powers Adblock Plus and Adblock Browser, that users are in favor of ad-based compromises that keep the free web running. Read more about the benefits of ad-filtering in this article on the eyeo blog.
But what we’ve also learned is that advertisers collect much more on you than they need, which for us marks a privacy breach and is why we developed our free privacy product Crumbs, because there should be serious guidelines and protection for the individuality of users It’s all about treating privacy as a right, not a privilege for a few, or for those who can afford to pay for expensive services. We believe in a healthy value exchange that keeps content on the internet free, with users empowered to decide what they want to share online, and with whom.
