As advertising companies continue to push the boundaries of online tracking in an effort to woo clients with eerily accurate ad targeting techniques, online privacy is seemingly becoming a thing of the past. One startup is looking to stop third-parties from tracking users on the web, however, and one of the company’s co-founders may be in a better position than most to accomplish this lofty goal.
Former Google engineer Brian Kennish began building Disconnect two years ago, according to a recent feature on The New York Times’ Bits blog. The service installs a plugin for either Chrome or Firefox and stops third parties from tracking users as they browse the web. It is currently blocks more than 2,000 different companies that track users online, most of which track users for the purposes of serving targeted advertisements.
“We are stopping that flow of data as you bounce around the Web,” Kennish told Bits. “Third-party retargeters are not going to have information about you.”
Kennish’s background at Google, an online advertising pioneer, may give him unique insights into online tracking services that others simply don’t have. And to make the software even more appealing, Disconnect allows users to pay whatever they want for the software and service, and to designate a portion of their payment that will go to charity if they choose.