Disconnect co-founder: 'People will pay for tools to protect privacy'

In my opinion there has been an endless stream of attempts at selling 'security' and privacy as a stand-alone product to end users with little success.

The key to successful security is to sell security focused products that seamlessly integrate privacy and security in a way that the user can understand.

When it comes to for example storage both us at https://spideroak.com and several competing companies focus on security and privacy as a integral part of a service offering.

This way the users can be certain that their data is secure, private and accessible without having to concern themselves with adding security as a 'feature'.

This approach does add a not inconsequential cost to both the cost base and the service offering, but we believe that it is becoming a more and more important sales argument, especially as more and more business critical data moves to the cloud.

Yes, they will pay for .... ooh! What's that? A game where I can raise chickens online and show my friends how well I do it? I just need to click "OK" to some popup? No problem!

Where were we again? Oh yes, people value their privacy and will pay to protect it. Definitely.

Maybe I am in the minority here, but I don't really care if companies use my behavior/information in order to serve up ads.

I don't see how advertisers having access to what brands I associate with or what my interests are has a major impact on anything outside of what I do on the web. Even on the web, the only way it impacts my experience is that I am served up more relevant ads. I don't think that advertisers having this information (or sites I use selling it) is a real problem - especially when it results in me not having to pay for a site or service that I value. Am I really alone on this?

Of course they will - just not very many of them, and not very much, and not if they discover one of the many free services that do the same thing.

I know three groups of people who at one time looked hard at producing a paid ad-blocker. All three of them independently decided it was a terrible idea for the above reasons.

The problem's compounded by the growing number of sites that just don't work properly if you block something that 'protects your privacy', but interferes with their business model. Sometimes this happens inadvertently, but not always.

I don't think people will pay for tools to protect their privacy because people have the choice to register a facebook account, and this choice makes most people feel like their privacy isn't at any risk.