Imagine an organization having 83,500 Stephen King novels worth of information on your life. A growing repository filled with detailed data on your online searches, browsing history, video views, purchases, location history, and more. To make matters worse, your data is sold to the highest bidder.
That’s Google today. The above is what happened to Washington Post columnist Stephen King and likely what’s happening to you. Google builds its $1.5 trillion business by grabbing every bit of data it can with very few restrictions. However, the problem is much bigger than Google. Under the guise of allowing unmatched convenience, Big Tech has fostered an internet where privacy is not the default. With monetization as the goal and despite promises to never sell any personal information, these tech monoliths find increasingly creative ways to exploit our data — even data that is truly sensitive.
But what if we did not need to sacrifice privacy on the web? According to Proton, people overwhelmingly want an internet that puts them first. They report that in the last year alone, hundreds of millions of people have chosen to take control of their data and protect their privacy by using privacy-focused tech services. According to Reuters, a 2020 survey by Transcend found that 93% of Americans would switch to a company that prioritizes their privacy if given a choice.
To put it simply, the world wants tech that values people first.
Each day at You.com, we reflect deeply on privacy and the future of the internet. We ask ourselves: “What data would be okay to collect, when to collect it, and for which purpose?” Our answer is that the decision power should be in the hands of our users. Our democratized search engine is one that you control — one where your privacy is the default — one with utmost convenience.
Here’s how You.com ensures privacy in practice:
You.com is one of 11 companies that signed Proton’s Privacy Pledge, which was launched in response to the public demand for an internet that gives you control of your privacy. With this pledge, we commit to five basic principles:
See the full pledge here.
At You.com our values of trust, facts, and kindness are paramount. We commit to building a search engine that puts you first and brings privacy back to tech. After all, better privacy means better internet. YOU is for you. We hope you’ll join us on this mission.
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