from Hacker News

Ask HN: Would you pay for a service that actively protects privacy?

by xfour on 12/31/21, 5:20 PM with 6 comments

Trying to get a sense of the perceived market outside my circle whether this is something worth putting in the hours necessary to reach an MVP.

I'm envisioning a suite of services including burner & legal options, for example

  Throwaway & forwarded email addresses
  Masked phone numbers
  
  Automated Opt-outs requests 
  Delete my information requests
And for checking companies compliance, creating a graph of the information that can be used to find pathways of where consumer information is being shared / sold.

Price would likely be enough to cover some of the incidentals above in the 2-5$ USD range.

  • by dhaavi on 1/1/22, 9:19 AM

    We‘re way down this road, albeit with a different set of services, which you can find at safing.io

    The biggest challenge we continue to face is how to make the value of privacy visible, as the privacy protection itself cannot be really seen by users.

    A good example is brave with their „big numbers going up“ of blocked ads and saved bandwidth on the New Tab page.

    If you can figure out how you can protect users _and_ make them feel that protection, they will pay for your service.

    If things go forward with your idea, it would be nice to have a chat, if you’re up for it.

  • by nradov on 12/31/21, 5:30 PM

    I would consider paying, but there are already numerous services offering burner email addresses and phone numbers. Some are even free. What's your unique value proposition?

    And how will you prevent spammers from abusing your service?

  • by yuppie_scum on 12/31/21, 6:03 PM

    I feel like handing your privacy to a single source is a big risk in itself. What about when the “privacy co” gets breached?

  • by wearta on 12/31/21, 6:07 PM

    i would for sure