Airlock

@peter_lee9 Hey there! Our team put in the work to read through every company's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, in order to get a detailed understanding of how personal data is being handled. We're also chatting with the top privacy lawyers and established consumer privacy organizations to make sure we have a holistic view on everything. What we found was that a lot of good privacy resources are out there, but it's just very fragmented. Our mission is to pull it all together so that every person has access to the best information at any given time. Context is key when making decisions about who has access to your data. This will be more important as we start to use more software and IoT devices in our everyday lives. It's an ambitious mission but our team is READY!

@bruno_wong Respect—that must have taken forever. Would be cool to see a blog post or something about what you learned from reading all that. Not sure anyone else in the history of mankind has done that, so insights could be valuable. Congrats to you and the team!

@bruno_wong it'd be pretty neat to actually link to or include the sections of the TOS that you found that lead you to conclude certain things about companies' behavior around private data... I'm thinking of a little ❓in a circle icon that opens a modal explaining "How do we know this?" This might help users get more savvy about reading/reviewing TOS themselves, since you're clearly never going to be able to cover every service that someone uses.

@chrismessina Great suggestion. We've tried hard to strike a balance between educating users and information overload (which a lot of people feel when they start peeling the privacy onion with us). Your suggestion could be an excellent middle ground for the people who want more information. I'll make a note to test this out!

@peter_lee9 Good idea! I'l see what my team and I can muster up. Thanks again for the support!

@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 😃

@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?

@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.

@mustafa_khan2 Hey! Good question. We have a lot of ideas about monetization, but right now, we’re focused on making a product that provides as much value for our users as possible. The one thing we can definitely say is that we’ll never sell the information that you give us access to.

@bruno_wong what information do you currently or plan to have access to?

@chrismessina Great question. We've designed Airlock to collect as little data as possible: you don't even have to submit your email to use the Airlock, so you can use it entirely anonymously if you're so inclined. We also don't ask for any permission to access any of the data on your device, because that's pretty much the exact opposite of what we stand for. You can read more about the data that we do (and don't) collect in our privacy policy here: https://www.tryairlock.com/priva...

@aaronlawrence_designs Thanks for the question! We are working on things that we can't dive into about right now, but I can share that we're exploring ideas around automation of those action items and even more proactive monitoring of the data you're sharing. We're also really interested in how upcoming privacy regulation will impact the lives of consumers :)

@maryam_murphy You read our minds! Our goal is to build in (optional) automation for as many of our Action Items as possible. Stay tuned 😉