Time to ban surveillance-based advertising
In an open letter to political decision-makers, Startpage, together with other data protection-friendly companies, calls for a ban on surveillance-based advertising.
Every day consumers are tracked, profiled and followed on the internet. To change that, Startpage, the world’s most private search engine, and 13 other privacy-friendly companies including Vivaldi, Protonmail and Nextcloud signed a letter to policy makers calling for a final ban on surveillance-based advertising.
In our digital age, trust is based on many different elements and this includes responsible and ethical handling of data. If you surf the Internet and suddenly see an advertisement that relates to something that you previously clicked in a completely different platform, then that is a huge invasion of privacy. The fundamental problem here is not advertising per se, but the tracking that comes with it.
Startpage shows that there is another way: Because from the start we opted for an advertising model that guarantees the protection of privacy by earning our money through contextual ads. Our CEO Robert E.G. Beens says:
“For years I have seen competitors irresponsibly handling human data. For this reason, we developed Startpage in 2006, the world’s first anonymous search engine that does not store or forward any personal information about users. Revenue is generated from contextual ads based only on the search term. With this model, we as a company were profitable from the start. It is a myth that a search engine needs personal information to be profitable or to provide high quality results. ”
Recently, the Norwegian Consumer Council published a report calling for a ban on surveillance-based ads. In solidarity, we the undersigned will be sending the following letter on Wednesday, July 7th, to EU and US regulators to encourage them to take action during legislative sessions and any relevant privacy discussions.
Time to ban surveillance-based advertising
Surveillance-based advertising permeates the internet today, creating a number of highly problematic issues for both consumers and businesses.
On June 23, a broad coalition of consumer rights organizations, civil rights groups, NGOs, as well as academics, researchers, privacy experts and enthusiasts – all concerned individuals – called on regulators to stop the invasive and privacy-hostile practices related to surveillance-based advertising.
In the EU, they urged regulators to consider a ban on surveillance-based advertising as a part of the Digital Services Act. In the U.S., they urged legislators to enact comprehensive privacy legislation.
We are a group of businesses who write to you today to show our support to this initiative. We represent small, medium and large businesses who all believe – and demonstrate on a daily basis – that it is possible to run profitable companies without exploiting the privacy of individuals.
In addition to the clear privacy issues caused by surveillance-based advertising, it is also detrimental to the business landscape.
In the surveillance-based advertising model, a few actors can obtain competitive advantages by collecting data from across websites and services and dominant platform actors can abuse their positions by giving preference to their own services.
These practices seriously undermine competition and take revenue away from content creators. Anti-competitive behaviour and effects serve to entrench dominant actors’ positions while complex supply chains and ineffective technologies lead to lost revenues for advertisers and publishers.
It is also difficult for consumers to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ actors in the digital sphere, which means that legitimate actors, amongst them many small and medium sized enterprises, are directly affected by the actions of unscrupulous companies.
This harms consumers and businesses, and can undermine the cornerstones of democracy.
Although we recognize that advertising is an important source of revenue for content creators and publishers online, this does not justify the massive commercial surveillance systems set up in attempts to “show the right ad to the right people”.
Other forms of advertising technologies exist, which do not depend on spying on consumers, and alternative models can be implemented without significantly affecting revenue. On the contrary – and that we can attest to – businesses can thrive without privacy-invasive practices.
We encourage you to take a stand and ban surveillance-based advertising.
With kind regards,
- Vivaldi Technologies, Jon von Tetzchner, CEO & Tatsuki Tomita, COO
- Fastmail Pty Ltd, Bron Gondwana, CEO
- Conva Ventures Inc., dba. Fathom Analytics, Jack Ellis & Paul Jarvis, Directors
- Proton Technologies AG, Dr. Andy Yen, CEO
- Tutao GmbH, dba. Tutanota, Matthias Pfau, Co-Founder and CEO
- Duck Duck Go, Inc., Gabriel Weinberg, Founder and CEO
- Disconnect Inc., Casey Oppenheim, Co-founder and CEO
- Mojeek Limited, Colin Hayhurst, CEO
- Ecosia GmbH, Christian Kroll, CEO
- Startpage & , Robert E.G. Beens, Co-Founder and CEO
- Nextcloud GmbH, Frank Karlitschek, Founder and CEO
- Kobler, Erik Bugge, CEO
- Strossle International, Håkon Tillier, CEO & Rickard Lawson, CMO
- Mailfence, Patrick De Schutter, Co-Founder and Managing Director
Do you want to participate? Help us to spread this message and share this post with friends, family, your colleagues and on social media – and tag your posts with the hashtag #BanSurveillanceAdvertising. Help us stop surveillance-based advertising for good.
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