“We’ve all experienced creepy ads based on our browsing and searches – but most are not sure how to confront this. You wouldn’t let your neighbor go through your mail let alone read it, so why let dozens of companies do that when you’re online?”
Washington, DC (PRWEB) August 29, 2013
The United States has become a nation of passive online exhibitionists feeding vast data-harvesting operations by private companies and the government. Hidden Reflex believe citizens are being reduced to data that is bought and sold, but that they neither own nor control.
Hidden Reflex, a privately held technology firm, today empowers consumers to say 'no' to data harvesting with the launch of the Epic Privacy Browser. Its thesis is simple: what you browse and search should always be private. Consumers can download Epic free at epicbrowser.com.
“We’ve all experienced creepy ads based on our browsing and searches – but most are not sure how to confront this. You wouldn’t let your neighbor go through your mail let alone read it, so why let dozens of companies do that when you’re online?” said Alok Bhardwaj, Hidden Reflex’s founder and CEO. “We’re finding people don’t want uninvited third parties to monitor their health, hobbies, politics, credit rating, browsing, searches or anything else about them. People are increasingly saying, ‘I am not for sale.’”
Douglas Rushkoff, a noted technology commentator for CNN, CBS, NPR and others and author of twelve books notes that, “We may not pay for the Internet with our dollars, but we more than make up for it with the data trail we leave behind us wherever we go, and the spyware we accept along with every cookie. We deserve a browser that gives us the ability to make the choice of what we share and with whom.”
The problem is even worse than most realize. Bundling users’ browsing and search histories with other personal information – income, location, credit card purchases and much more – creates billions of dollars a year in revenues and is a driving force for a new multi-billion-dollar industry known as “Big Data.” Hidden Reflex believe It has opened a Pandora’s box of unseemly and questionable activities, as this data affects applications for jobs, loans, health insurance, life insurance, prices at e-commerce sites and more.
To get an idea of the magnitude of data stalking, in a typical one-hour browsing session, Epic blocks more than 1,000 tracking attempts by over 40 companies. While some people wrongly believe the so-called standard ‘private browsing’ modes of standard Web browsers protect them, that is simply not the case. NSS Labs, a leading security research firm in a June 2013 research report on browser privacy noted that “private browsing does not prevent tracking, but rather it is designed to erase the history of a user’s actions when the browser is closed.”
The Epic Privacy Browser, built on the same open-source platform as Chrome, includes all of its benefits and adds a broad set of always-on privacy features that stop third parties from tracking users and storing their searches. With its encrypted data preference and removal of Google services and tracking, Epic helps safeguard users from general surveillance. Epic strips away third-party companies’ ability to deploy various tracking methods and features a one-click proxy to protect IP addresses. By blocking tracking scripts, Epic Privacy Browser loads Web pages up to 25 percent faster than other browsers. For those of us concerned about our online privacy but uncertain of what to do, Epic is free and simple-to-install. If you’re familiar with Chrome, you’ll be in your element when browsing in Epic, just breathing more freely.
About Hidden Reflex
Hidden Reflex is a privately owned software company with funding from angel investors and the Washington Post Company based in the United States and India. In 2012, after being dismayed by the level of privacy intrusions, Hidden Reflex began development of the Epic Privacy Browser, a Chromium-based browser that protects users’ privacy while providing a speedy browsing experience. Founder and CEO Alok Bhardwaj worked in Manhattan as a mergers-and-acquisitions investment banker for technology companies and was a researcher at Columbia Business School.