http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/02/27/wall-street-journal-privacy-series-inspires-one-start-up/

February 27, 2011

Wall Street Journal Privacy Series Inspires One Start-Up

By Julia Angwin

In October, Google engineer Brian Kennish read an article in the Wall Street Journal about a Facebook privacy breach. [1]

Concerned about Facebook inadvertently transmitting his personal data, Mr. Kennish went home that night and wrote a piece of software that blocked Facebook widgets, such as the "like" button and those boxes with Facebook Friends faces from appearing on Web pages.

"When you see those Facebook widgets, the URL of the page you are on is being sent back to FB along with your ID," Mr. Kennish said. "So they can reconstruct your browsing history on their servers if they wanted to."

Facebook says it uses the data collected by social widgets to measure the effectiveness of its service. "We do not use the data for other purposes, such as tracking, ad targeting, or profiling and we delete the data after a limited amount of time--90 days at the most," says Facebook spokeswoman Jillian Carroll.

A few blogs picked up the news, and within two weeks, 50,000 people had installed the free software "Facebook Disconnect," which only worked with the Google Chrome Web browser.

Success prompted him to think about the fact that "your search history on Google, Yahoo and Bing says as much about you as your browsing history," Mr. Kennish said. "I realized I would have to leave Google to address that."

So in November, Mr. Kennish quit Google. In December, he launched a new piece of free software -- "Disconnect" -- which blocks a wider array of widgets from Facebook, Twitter and Digg. It also prevents search engines from providing personalized search results based on tracking user behavior.

Google spokesman Chris Gaither declined to comment on Disconnect, but said that users can also turn off search personalization by removing their Web history. (Instructions are here.) [2]

Importantly, it keeps users logged into Gmail while keeping their search queries private. "You can still have a good user experience but not have your searches tracked," Mr. Kennish said.

Since December, he says he has been surprised to receive three acquisition offers and four unsolicited investment offers. "Quite frankly, I wasn't expecting anyone to have any interest," he says.

Now, he has set up a business Disconnect Inc. and is considering selling premium features in addition to the free tools he currently offers.

"I'm really excited about this wave of startups that seem to be popping up now," he says. "Having companies that are dedicated to privacy, just like there were companies dedicated to antivirus software, is an effective approach to maintain user privacy."

[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304772804575558484075236968.html

[2] http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54048