One company says that in order to protect your privacy, it must know as little as possible about you, and it's patented that idea.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [April 23, 2004]

Dallas, Tex.-based Privacy, Inc. is serious about privacy. On its website, the company says, "our privacy policy: the less we know, the better we can protect you. Is that any way to run a company?"

Yes.

Click on the link and a voiceover elaborates, "our privacy policy is very simple, and is based on the fact that the less we know about you, the better we can serve you. We collect your e-mail address, and store it in a high security data center. You control your information, and can delete it at any time. We do not share, trade, or sell your e-mail address. We do not collect any personal information. We do not use cookies, or web beacons, or web bugs, or adware, or spyware, or spam. We do not collect your IP address. We do not use Microsoft Passport. We do not support pop up ads. This privacy policy will change whenever we can think of more ways to protect your privacy."

The company's vendor session at ISPCON started off with similar panache. The presenter introduced himself as Dirk Reginald. He said that the company was raffling a free trip to Australia, and those wishing to enter should put their name, home address, and home phone number on a card. "You wouldn't want this delivered to work, where it might get lost," he said.

Then Fritz Johnson, vice president of sales for Privacy, Inc., introduced himself. He said that he was not Dirk Reginald, that there was no raffle, and that nobody should have to give out their home address—ever.

The company envisions a world in which individuals do not need to hand out personal information during everyday transactions. Although the mechanism can be complex, the idea is appealing and simple.

The mechanism is a series of codes. You send out a one-time e-mail address to Amazon.com when you buy a book. You use a one-time use credit card number that is never used again (attached, perhaps, to a Paypal account). You provide Amazon.com with a dummy home mail address.

Paypal knows who you are, but not what you bought or where you live. Amazon.com knows what you bought, but not who you are or where you live. Fedex knows where you live, but not who you are or what you bought.

This system is scheduled for delivery in October. It is patented. The patent, number 6,119,101, was approved on Sept. 12, 2000 (originally filed on Jan. 17, 1996).

For now, the company is offering My Privacy Policy (MPP), an online demo of which is available on the site. This is a system that delivers disposable e-mail addresses (the company calls them virtual e-mail addresses). Users can choose whether to receive e-mail only from the company they gave the address to, or whether to allow other companies to send e-mail to the address (with an option that third party mail be flagged). Policies are stored on Privacy, Inc.'s servers, and the user-defined rules are applied there.

Since users set their own policies, the company says, they don't have to search through a filtered mail box looking for false positives. Trusted senders will have a good e-mail address that nobody else has.

But here at ISP-Planet, we like disposable e-mail addresses for another reason. They will finally allow end users to see who's selling their information. We're looking forward to seeing the culprits get caught.

When a trusted e-commerce company (or bank, or friend) sells your e-mail address, and you start getting spam on that virtual e-mail address, you simply let it expire and all mail to that address is blocked.

Why not try it yourself? Wouldn't you like to know who's selling your personal information?

The company is genuinely interested in obtaining small ISPs as referrers. It offers 17.5 percent of the $39.95 annual fee as a bounty, after that fee is collected. That means the program can work with ISPs of any size, and smaller ISPs may like the fact that the company handles the scanning. The company has started working with ISP associations and wholesalers. For example, it is now a Platinum Sponsor of the American Alliance of Service Providers.

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