Disconnect

Till 2012 Brian Kennish was engaged in software development for services of advertizing on the Internet. At first in DoubleClick company, then in ^[1], it was engaged in creation of servers and programming interfaces for developers who connected advertizing with the advertized product.^[2]

But, the more it worked on technologies of advertizing, the that amount of information which advertisers collected about the clients disturbed more. "I realized that in spite of the fact that I know technology from within, I do not represent at all where there are all my data and that with them is done" — Kennish told, "and it very much frightens".

In 2010 Kennish left Google and began an own way which in a year led it to Disconnect application creation. This week the Palo Alto company released version 2.0 of this application for browsers Chrome and Firefox which creates obstacles to the companies collecting information by "reorientation". In difference from other programs which block advertizing Disconnect in most cases loads advertizing, but at the same time block advertisers from tracking of the clients on the Internet.

Reorientation – the reason that on Facebook you see advertizing of a product which you in the same day looked for in Google. But some companies are not limited to collecting only of similar information and as methods of tracking become more and more sophisticated, for ordinary users it becomes more difficult to understand what information is collected by advertisers and as it is performed.

"It appears there are thousands of the companies and organizations which collect, in my opinion, very personal information, for example such, how the history of visit of pages on the Internet, or the history of search" — Kennish explains, "thus my personal information is in hands of 2000 different companies and who knows that they with it do? It is difficult even to provide it. We could rummage in privacy policy of these companies to find out what they do with our data, but it is difficult to have complete idea of what really happens to information".

Disconnect, as well as the similar program from Abine and Ghostery company, is aimed at providing to users more control over what information they share. After installation of the application, users by means of an icon in the browser, can select what companies and what information can be obtained from them. The program sorts requests by categories, advertizing, analytics and social requests. It is possible to prohibit a request by means of only several clicks.

In the second version, developers rewrote the application engine, having focused on acceleration of load time of pages, by faster filtering of inappropriate advertizing content. After the comparative analysis of speed of loading on 1000 most popular websites of the world, Kennish says that Disconnect allows to load pages 27 percent faster, at the same time consumes 17% less resources of the processor. The company also expanded the list of the websites which are engaged in tracking of information, and now says that it has the most complete base in the world. Also the program is updated every week, adding filters for the new detected websites.

Also new version increases security of the computer, including in the filter the websites, potentially dangerous to infection with viruses. Also the program compulsorily ciphers data during use of the popular websites through public wi-fi of network.

Likely the most interesting part in this program, is the fact that it is on sale by the principle "pay how many you want". When you load the application, you are asked to enter donation, but you can also pay nothing in general.

"We do not want to do security of network by the privilege of a certain class," — Kennish says, "suggest people to make voluntary contributions, instead of the fixed price which not all are able to afford themselves it seems to us more fair".

The lack of any legislative restrictions and additional obstacles in browsers, drew a lot of attention to reorientation and the enormous number of personal information which the companies collect in the purposes. Despite it, similar actions of most the companies are still invisible. If their activity is not fixed by programs for the Disconnect type.

"Recently the public began to pay more attention to this problem," — Kenniish, "but nevertheless says, still the problem remains hidden. And than you learn about it more, more it begins to disturb that you".

Notes