Sunday, November 16, 2014

The privacy app that's taking on Google...

Disconnect, a young San Franciscan startup, builds software than can cut off intrusive advertisers silently grabbing users’ data, and protect web activity with encryption. But the average Android user won't have heard much about it. Not through Google at least, which has removed the tool from its Play store.

The startup isn’t backing down in its fight for people’s privacy, though. Over the past year, the young firm, which boasts ex-NSA engineer Patrick Jackson as its CTO, has been wrestling Google to get its app on the marketplace so more Android users can use it to protect themselves from government snoops and digital criminals.

It’s losing that fight. But it won’t let Google slow it down. Today, it has launched a completely refreshed app that does a lot to protect data: It encrypts communications, routes traffic through different servers across the globe, filters out more than 5,000 “invasive” services and visualises how tracking software takes information during web sessions and when running apps, allowing users to cut off digital tentacles reaching for their privates.

For a VPN software with lots of bells and whistles, it’s not too pricey either: the full desktop and phone application that covers up to three devices comes at $5 a month, or $50 a year. Some pieces will remain free, such as the tracking visualisation browser add-on. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Brazil building internet cable to Portugal to avoid NSA surveillance...
  2. Revealed: US mail subjected to widespread government surveillance program...
  3. ‘Facebook a gift to intelligence agencies’ - Laura Poitras
  4. Why you should always password protect your smartphone...
  5. Glenn Greenwald: Why privacy matters...

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