Are you a private person? Do you care about your privacy? Do you want to share your information with friends, colleagues and business associates—only sharing with who you want, when you want and no one else? Facebook can share your information with anyone they choose even though you select only friends in your privacy settings, marketers and other third-parties have many ways to access everything you post and upload online. PrivateContact may just be the only true private social network.
Interested? Read on.
In the greater Miami-Dade area alone we have nearly 2.2 million people who use social networks. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, MySpace & Google are just a few both adults and teens use. Many times, we use these networks throwing caution to the wind. And many times, that lack of caution comes back to bite us in the ass. So:
Back in 2009, a young man named Orlando Eagle graduated from Stanford Business School in Silicon Valley with an MBA. Mr. Eagle also has an engineering background and works as a privacy consultant, but now plans on opening what he considers to be a true Private Social Network.
Facebook vs. PrivateContact
- Whatever you upload to Facebook could be accessed by multiple third-parties. PrivateContact does not sell or share any of your information with third-parties .
- Facebook keeps all of your data even when you delete it; PrivateContact permanently deletes all of the data you ask them to delete—nothing is kept.
- You must be a member of Facebook to view others on Facebook; you don’t have to be a member of PrivateContact to view a friend’s information.
- Facebook architecture allows for tracking spyware on the Facebook platform; PrivateContact is secure by design.
- Facebook's private information has and will continue to be used against you, i.e.: getting you fired, reprimanded or keeping you from getting a job; PrivateContact is completely anonymous and can never be used against you.
- Facebook is supported by advertising; PrivateContact is user supported.
- Facebook can do anything it wants with your data: apply Facial Recognition to your photos, reorganize your posts into a timeline, suggest your profile to strangers in People you may know, etc.; At PrivateContact, you OWN your data.
How it works
In simple terms, investors and corporations are not interested in protecting your right to privacy; they are instead, interested in protecting the revenue streams generated by their ads and business models. This is in direct conflict with the right to privacy.
In point of fact, many job screening agencies and even the federal government troll Social Networks compiling information on you and archiving it so as to use at the appropriate time. Many times, this information is used against you in negative blowback; such as background checks, school suspensions, grant dis-approval, denied credit applications, court suits, club suspension or political criticism and even sexual discrimination—to name a few.
Moreover, if a social network only showed your friends what you opted in instead of everything except what you opted out, they would make less money—because your friends would waste less time on their sites clicking on the ads. Make sense? Yes it does. And this is why Mr. Eagle doesn’t trust social networks—and frankly, you shouldn’t either.
Facebook and Google are not free; you pay them with your data and your data is what makes them money. And in essence, it’s legal as you’ve given-up your right to privacy.
PrivateContact does not work this way. Anything and everything you share goes only to who you designate. You compile lists of sharing. You designate who should be on which list. Essentially, PrivateContact is user controlled, not investor controlled. PrivateContact does not answer to corporations or investors, it answers to you.
You and you alone own your data, it will be deleted permanently if you so desire. Additionally, PrivateContact submits a disclaimer to your friends requiring them to agree not to share your information with anyone without your permission.
You are afforded multiple anonymous accounts as well. And here’s the best part, your friends don’t have to be members. Once you’ve established with whom you’d like to share data, you friend them by sending them encrypted HTTPS links that are unique for each person, and they can access your posts, photos and files whenever it's convenient for them.
You can share different profiles with different people. You can import your address book into PrivateContact and send the links automatically to thousands of contacts. You can edit and notate your entries all completely private from outside eyes. (Please see the video for a detailed tutorial).
Accordingly, Mr. Eagle has gone to IndieGoGo to launch this endeavor. He’s asking for support from those who would use the site. There are perks as usual, and he promises that no matter how much is raised to launch the site, it will go up.
A few facts you should know before I go. PrivateContact is a free service for the occasional user, however, if you use it a lot (TBD), it then becomes a paid service. The fee is guestimated at around $5 a month depending mostly on the size of personal storage. However, your friends never pay to see your data. And almost anything you can upload to Facebook, you can upload to PrivateContact.
So remember, PrivateContact is for sharing specific data with specific people and no one else—ever. And if you’d like more information, Mr. Eagle invites you to email him and he will respond in a timely manner.
With privacy as a major concern these days, you probably should check-out this project. Stay safe and guard your privacy guys and gals.
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