About Us

About PrivatizeMe

Around 2013, members of the PrivatizeMe team noticed ads that seemingly followed them while browsing the Internet; ads for hotel rooms in Barcelona that stalked us for months after the business trip was over for example. Like most of us, we like ads when they are meaningful and timely. We are not anti-advertising – in fact we recognize that our favorite sites are able to provide content that we read and like because they are funded by these ads.

What bothers us is that these “trusted sites” share our personal data including browsing history with their “marketing partners” that include data brokers, Data brokers collect our personal data, build profiles on us and sell them to other websites. These websites (we have never visited before) already have our profile and know about our spending, searching or social media behavior. Based on our profiles, untrusted websites change the content and up charge us and even preselect products they show you – you see what they want you to see – not what you want to see.

While browsers have a “Do not Track” setting and can inform websites not to track you, most websites ignore this request. Imagine the scenario – you can tell sites not to send you viruses, but to be truly virus free you need to install anti-virus software. Similarly, to stop websites from tracking you and sharing your information, you need active anti tracking and anti fingerprinting technology for your browser and smartphone.

This is why we launched PrivatizeMe with the following mission:

Our Mission

1. We believe that internet users own not only their generally accepted personal identity information such as name, age, social security number etc. but should also have control over the online information they generate including their search, browsing, buying and transaction history including their likes, dislikes etc.
2. We believe that internet users should be able to designate sites as trusted sites but not allow these trusted sites to share their personal data with their marketing partners. We should be able to see information that we want to see, not what an untrusted site wants to show us based on our profile (unless we want them to).
3. PrivatizeMe provides members with free tools and services for their computers and smartphones that allow them to regain control over their personal data by deterring corporate e-stalking Including online user tracking and profiling and eroding the value of personal information that is already captured by data brokers.
4. We will not capture your online data and trade or sell it in any form.(Note, we will keep your name, email address etc, private, but we will cooperate and divulge that information to law enforcement under court orders). Our service it is aimed at everyday users and is not for the privacy paranoid or for use in illegal activities.

 

Our Team

PrivatizeMe is based in Durham, NC in close proximity to three major universities: Duke, UNC Chapel Hill and NC State. Our engineering team located in the US, EU and India.

The principals leading the company are:

• Ajit Pendse, CEO
• Darren Cooper, Chief Architect and Director of Engineering
• Marty Lee, Director of Product Management and Network Operations

 

We have a stellar panel of advisors with deep understanding of privacy and business issues:

• David Hoffman (Advisor – Privacy Policy Issues)
• Les Buckley (Advisor – Business Strategy)
• Kishor Pendse (Advisor – Business Strategy)

 

Contact us

Want to contact us?

Send us an email at support@privatizeme.com or send us snail mail.

Our contact information is below: