As we continue to see more details brought to light in how the government requests and uses information about what we do on the web and on our mobile devices, an ex-Googler and a consumer rights attorney who have dedicated themselves to helping users remain private have raised some funding to do this better and in more places.
Disconnect, the startup behind the Disconnect.me extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers, which lets users of Facebook, Google and Twitter keep themselves from being tracked by third party sites, and the Disconnect 2 app that covers some has raised a $3.5 million Series A round.
At the same time, as a measure of dedication to its principle of being positioned not for profit but for social good, Disconnect has been designated as a B Corporation, a semi-charitable certification. With the tax breaks and other help that this offers, it will let Disconnect dedicate time to raising awareness and campaigning as well as to creating for-profit products.
“As a B Corporation, we’re able to spend more time than a traditional company on activities such as consumer education, petition drives, and close collaboration with non-profits,” Gus Warren, a former Venture Partner at FirstMark Capital who is part of Disconnect’s executive team, noted in a statement. “Disconnect is committed to benefiting not just shareholders but all stakeholders, including the public.” Warren will run the company’s New York office.
This most recent round of funding was led by FirstMark Capital, and comes on the back of a $600,000 seed round announced in March 2012. That round was led by Highland Capital Partners with participation from Charles River Ventures, and angels including David Cancel, Mark Jacobstein, Ramesh Haridas, Vikas Taneja, Chris Hobbs, and Andy Toebben.
Founders Brian Kennish, formerly an engineer at Google who left to work on this full-time, and Casey Oppenheim, a consumer rights attorney, say the startup will be using the funding first of all to help with the launch of Disconnect 2 for Safari and Opera browsers.
Disconnect 2, launched in April 2013 as a Chrome and Firefox extension, blocks some 2,000 third-party websites that track you across the web, vastly expanding the power of the service that initially focused on a handful of portals Disconnect.me first kicked off when Kennish was still at Google and created the Chrome extension for Facebook specifically, in October 2010.
In addition to helping block some 2,000 third-party sites that track users’ browsing histories, the Disconnect 2 extension also helps filter out malware and encrypts data that you share on sites “to prevent wireless eavesdropping.” The company also promises that by cutting down on a lot of the tracking noise, users are actually able to see faster-loading pages and use 17% less bandwidth on average.
“Increasingly, people want to know who’s tracking them online and want to have a say about what information is being collected about them,” Oppenheim noted in a statement. “Our software is designed to put users back in control so they can decide how their personal data is used,” adds Kennish.
We’ve reached out to Kennish and Oppenheim with more questions and will update this post when we hear back.
via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/YigglC7mdWY/
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