How Fixable Is the Unsafe Internet?

The larger the Internet superhighway of information grows; the more users get run over by privacy abuses and stolen data. If only we could rebuild the Internet's infrastructure to make data's journey safer and more secure is a common cry of IT and cybersecurity experts.

Some efforts are underway to mitigate the privacy and data theft issues. But despite the occasional proposals that have cropped up over the years to replace the Internet with a new and improved superhighway, current projects are akin to patching potholes and repaving lanes on physical transit roadways. A recent study from Consumer Reports' Digital Lab reveals that 96 percent of Americans agree that more should be done to protect consumer privacy. But don't expect to see a whole new alternative Internet emerging any year soon. Instead, you will see a focus on software offerings built around privacy and security rather than hardware. These "patches" including new alternative search, browsers, email, chat, productivity, payments, and AdTech solutions.

To that end, the company last October launched an app built on its new privacy protocol. This new standard will attempt to change how online vendors and companies wheel and deal with the personal information of billions of Internet users. The goal is to take control of your user information from others and give it back to you. Every bit of personal information online is acquired, stored, organized, and used to sell, track, and even profile everyone on the planet including you, according to Talent.

Fixing What's Broken

In discussing the ills of affecting the Internet, Tallent noted that a number of workaround solutions are already available. She expects more will soon be on the way. For instance, now, you can get the Googled phones. The e.foundation offers the first of such phones in 2021. More the Googled phones expected this year will be released from OSOM Products. These phones will not survey your data for their own purposes.

Another patching solution is coming for messaging apps. Signal and Telegram led the way in 2020 for private messaging by offering end-to-end encryption. In 2021, the next generation of messaging apps will actually allow you to remove your messages from someone else's phone if you so choose. Soon your messages will always belong solely to you. File-sharing improvements are also coming this year; 2021 will bring true peer-to-peer file sharing. Completely encrypted files can be transmitted without being stored forever on a server in the cloud. Also look for location sharing. This year you will be able to share your location privately with family and friends and opt in to sharing location data with other entities if asked.

Social Media

In 2020 we started to see the rise in private social media sites built on the likes of Mastodon. Then as conservatives found themselves increasingly censored on YouTube and Facebook, they turned to sites like Parler.

This trend will continue in 2021 as social media sites allow more nuanced categorization of people instead of just "followers" and "friends." These "groups" can be used across multiple apps, making them far more interesting, useful, and fun. "Currently your data is spread all over the Internet. Fortunately, there are new companies being created that help you take that data back," she continued.

For instance, last year Mine announced that it can figure out which companies have your data, how potentially vulnerable your data is, and how to remove it from those company servers. As these services expand in 2021, many companies will see a devaluation of their mass data stores and may be forced to turn to different business models. "When you have true privacy and the ability to take information back, new exciting apps will emerge in this space. An example is a voting app that lets you take polls among your friends privately and anonymously," she said.

What Is Needed and Viable

Rather than creating an entirely new Internet from the ground up, privacy-first companies are applying proven and well-understood technology alternatives that share a thesis around no surveillance and putting people in control of their data. While The @ Company focuses on a new protocol for the secure exchange of information, other examples include Mozilla and Brave on the browser side, Neeva and DuckDuckGo in search, and Linktree and Mastodon in social, noted Tallent. "Privacy compliance is essentially an impossible problem to solve at the application/process level and not usually associated with a good online experience," she noted.

Many people do not care for surveillance, but they simply do not yet know that there is a better way. The challenge is to prove that this can be fundamentally solved with a new protocol/platform, that superior, privacy-first experiences are possible, and to seed the market with these better experiences on the Internet by partnering with app developers. "We (The @ Company) are a no-brainer for app developers, not just because we make privacy compliance easy to integrate, but because our platform provides completely new and better online experiences," she said.

The typical consumer does not think about privacy, but rather about convenience, information, inspiration, and entertainment from using the Internet. Even if security or privacy becomes a pain point, the typical consumer may not act to replace a solution until the pain of inconvenience or bad experience exceeds the good experiences, explained Tallent. "So rather than wait for an Internet Armageddon, we prefer providing user experiences that meet and hopefully exceed what people are currently getting from incumbent utility app providers. We find that the privacy-first players that are getting significant traction have created strong 'bridging' experiences that allow people to try an alternative," she offered.

If the bridging experiences meet expectations around good user experience, some will be instantly won over. But most will gradually integrate over time until they have entirely replaced their previous app with an alternative.