Great product. Shocked to find out my privacy score! Thanks for the help with securing my digital privacy!

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6yr ago

Bruno Wong

Airlock

Maker

@ybudman Sorry to shock you! Most people are being confronted by the fact that they never read the Privacy Policies of apps they use. It's not your fault though, Privacy Policies are designed to not be read. We are going to change that for you. Good luck and please let me know if you have any questions of comments! Thanks for supporting Airlock!

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6yr ago

Roj Niyogi

Grok Button

(1) Being unclear about the business model makes this a non-starter for me. Companies have started with the "do no evil" philosophy and end up "doing evil" in an effort to make money. If you have ideas, worth sharing with your users - otherwise, you're not telling the whole story. (2) There's no Terms of Use. (3) Your Privacy Policy allows you to be acquired by a company "doing evil" in which case IT'S A TRAP. =) (4) Your Privacy Policy can be amended in a way that allows you to (a) acquire 1MM users under the "we do no evil" philosophy (b) amend the policy to allow you to "do evil" (c) monetize in a way that breaks the original philosophy. 10. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY We may amend this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make any changes to the Personal Information that we collect, or the way we use your Personal Information, we will notify you prior to the change becoming effective via a notification in the App and/or by sending you an email (if you’ve shared your email with us). You are bound by any changes to the Privacy Policy when you use the Services after such changes have been first emailed or, if later, the effective date stated in the email. I recognize there's a land grab in the wake of the FB/Onavo debacle but being completely open/honest with your audience is a good idea. The VPN companies have been good about this because you explicitly *pay* for their services. If your users aren't paying for the product, they are the product - maybe not now, but definitely in the future.

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6yr ago

Chris Messina

Raycast

Top Hunter

Airlock is very cool! It feels very accessible and straightforward and provides useful, direct instructions on how to improve your own privacy protections or review your current situation. Given all the recommendations for so many popular apps, I think it might also be useful to have a priority indicator... I also don't know whether each action offers the same point value, or if some are more valuable. If it's the latter, then disclosing their point value might be a way to indicate their value/importance. If they're all weighted the same, then again, it would be useful to have a measure of impact for each recommendation. Besides being a bit overwhelming (OMG PRIVACY IS SO HARD), this app offers a wealth of useful information in one place. Love it.

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6yr ago

Bruno Wong

Airlock

Maker

@chrismessina Great suggestion. The Action Items for each app are ranked in order of 'importance' (admittedly a bit of a subjective concept)... but there's no way for a user to know that. We are working on some solutions on being more transparent about that. In terms of priority, after a bunch of user testing, we found that improving privacy is a lot like trying to lose weight. You can't just cut to steamed veggies and exercise 7 days a week, or else you'll just give up. With privacy, if we tell you to do the highest priority items first (like using a password manager), it might feel too daunting and you might give up. So we ended up in a place where we, first, prioritize some lower hanging fruit Action Items, so that you gain confidence and momentum moving forward. That said, we are learning every day and will continue to tweak this part of the app 😃

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6yr ago

Chris Messina

Raycast

Top Hunter

@bruno_wong I understand. I guess I ended up feeling a bit overwhelmed without some sense of urgency or priority... maybe you could also make it somewhat social (albeit, doing so while maintaining your commitment to privacy might be an interesting challenge) by showing which activities are trending or the most popular among Airlock users (which can be done anonymously, of course). I think I also felt a little confused about the whole notion of "privacy" though... like, what are you trying to help people solve for? Increasing their ability to be secret? Decreasing their threat surface area from possible hacks, etc? Giving people a peace of mind that they're not being tracked? Reducing the personalization and relevance of ads? There's this assumption that surveillance capitalism is bad but don't we want more relevant services and content for free? Are we actually ready/able to pay for all these things that we get for free? Can each of really afford to pay to turn off the surveillance given the large number of internet services many of us now rely on and use on a daily basis? I guess put another way — what's your philosophy when it comes to equipping consumers with these choices, and if you succeed, what does the world look like? How is it different and presumably better than the one we live in now?

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6yr ago

Bruno Wong

Airlock

Maker

@chrismessina Thank you for wanting to go deeper into this topic! I agree with your suggestion to make privacy more social. Social proof is something we are exploring and excited to integrate as our user base grows. In terms of what we are trying to help people solve for, we are still early so there’s so much to learn around this space. But, right now, what we do know is that privacy is different for everyone and we see 3 pillars of value creation: 1. Help people improve their privacy with specific Action Items 2. Help people shape and articulate their privacy preferences --- people need a foundation to start from, so that, as they use more services, they’ll have a clearer idea of data transactions they are comfortable with. 3. Give people more context --- it’s hard to make privacy decisions if you do not know whether or not a company has been unethical with user data and/or has an association with unethical companies. Moving forward, we believe these data points will play a bigger role in consumption of digital services. In terms of free vs paid services, yes, we do think we can afford to pay for these services. Early Web 2.0 was a complete data free-for-all where everything was shiny and new and people really didn't understand what they were giving away for 'free' services. We'd argue that people still really don't understand the value of what they're giving away: Facebook and Google are among the most valuable companies in the world, which makes clear that consumers are on the wrong end of the services-for-data exchange. But the pendulum is swinging. News and music are two services that we use every day have gone from free to largely paid over the last few years. Same goes for online video with the rise of Netflix et al. The ever-climbing payouts to App Store developers is another clear indicator that people are willing to pay for digital services. That's not to say that the data-for-services exchange should disappear from the web, just that it should probably be less common. And the people who choose to enter into that exchange should *definitely* approach it with a clear-eyed understanding of what exactly is going on. We hope that Airlock can play a role in the transition to that next equilibrium.

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6yr ago

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