Airlock

Prioritize your privacy by ending unwanted data collection

6 followers

Prioritize your privacy by ending unwanted data collection

6 followers

Airlock helps you reclaim your privacy by ending unwanted data collection. We review your apps and websites to reveal leaks of your personal data. • Obtain personalized privacy reports on your apps and phone settings • Monitor apps for privacy abuse 24/7

Launch tags:iOS•Privacy•Tech

Launch Team

Migma — Lovable for Email

Lovable for Email

Promoted

Raycast

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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7yr ago

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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7yr ago

Raycast

@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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7yr ago

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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7yr ago

Airlock

Maker

Hi Product Hunt! Bruno from Airlock here 👋 Today, my team and I are very excited to launch Airlock for iOS. We believe that everyone has the right to their digital privacy, and we understand it can be overwhelming for people to make sense of their privacy policy agreements, the data breaches we read about in the news, and updates around privacy regulation. It’s a lot of information to take in, and a lot of the time, it’s hard to know where to start! We spent a lot of time trying to understand the complexities of digital privacy and we found that a great starting point is to centralize the important information, so that it’s easy for anyone to get more context on where their personal data is going. Whether you are a person who’s a privacy expert or a person who has done very little, we design this app so that anyone can start to understand privacy a little more. The deeper you dive into Airlock, the more you’ll learn! That said, we are also working on some really cool automated solutions, but, as a first step, we just want people to try Airlock out and tell us what they like and what they want. Our dream is to empower people to understand and manage their digital privacy and our team is so happy to be able to embark on this journey with you.

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7yr ago

I really like this product. It helped me find out things that Facebook was doing with my data that I wasn’t aware of and directed me on how to stop the data stream going forward. Great product, honest service and good timing! I’m curious if you can share any ideas you’re entertaining or have in mind for the future?

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7yr ago

Airlock

Maker

@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 :)

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7yr ago

This is great! I often try to do my research and be careful about which software I use, especially on my phone (no FB or FB-owned apps allowed). But it's hard to keep track of everything, especially as the data that's being tracked evolves. Where do you source the information about what data companies are using? And will you update me over time as companies' policies change?

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7yr ago

App is super easy to use, and based on my preferences, prompted me to change a few settings that drastically improved my confidence in privacy.

Pros:

Super intuitive and educational at the same time

Cons:

I wish the app could do it all for me!

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7yr ago

This is cool - and now I just want to turn all of those yellow recommendation things to green! There goes my productivity at work today...

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7yr ago

Airlock

Maker

@hanako_tonozuka1 Haha amazing! We tried our best to make recommendations easy to follow and execute. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions or comments.

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7yr ago

It's given me more awareness and ownership over what data I'm sharing with what company - I've made some changes to my settings thanks to Airlock.

Pros:

Love how easy it is to use

Cons:

Not yet available to Android users - I have friends/family who would really benefit from this.

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7yr ago

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