Consumers have unknowingly accepted a method of payment for online services they believe to be free, effectively trading their personal information in exchange for those services.
While many leading online services are marketed to consumers as "free services," this is not entirely true. Your personal information is the new web currency largely replacing cash as the accepted payment method by leading web services. Information about your habits, interests, needs, desires and fears are more valuable to online service companies than your money. You provide the information that makes targeted advertising possible.
The debate over how personal information is accessed by online services has mostly focused on technical factors including cookies, IP addresses and data retention times. While critically important, this framework of discussion does not address why your personal information is gathered and retained and how web services make money from it.
Sophisticated public relations campaigns by the largest online services effectively conceal how your personal information is leveraged to generate revenue and may be largely responsible for a general lack of consumer awareness regarding the increasing threat to privacy rights. The stated goal of many leading web services is to accumulate the most comprehensive database of information about you in order to target far more personalized advertisements at you that would command higher rates from advertisers.
"Many consumers spend hours everyday entering personal data into web services at home and at work and most have no idea how their personal information makes money for online services," said TransMedia Chairman and CEO, Donald Leka. "The online advertising business model is being taken to new extremes and the right to privacy lies in the balance."
"The advertising business model has also resulted in product innovation taking a back seat to the holy grail of building the perfect advertising platform focused almost exclusively on better ways to target advertising at consumers. Glide is free of advertising and designed to promote your right to privacy. Our mission is to serve you with a rapid and continuous stream of useful and fun innovative products," said Mr. Leka.
When you sign up for a Glide account, you are effectively renting your online living space where you can store all of your personal digital belongings and enjoy your privacy in an advertising free environment. Only you can provide permission to enter your Glide living space. You decide what is private in Glide, public in Glide or public on the Internet. We believe your digital information is your digital DNA.
Glide provides you with powerful innovative tools to better organize your daily life without big brother guiding you. Glide is designed to simplify and consolidate your digital life and reduce information and systems overload.
1) Free automated online synchronization of your music, video, documents, photos, contact, calendars and bookmarks for Windows, Mac and Linux PCs for anytime, anywhere access on all of your devices;
2) Free automated conversions of your files for access on Windows, Mac and Linux PCs and most smartphones creating universal compatibility;
3) Free mobile access and advanced personal computing capabilities from most smartphones;
4) A free Online Mobile Operating System to manage your digital life;
5) The most comprehensive free mobile application suite including Glide Write, Glide Presenter, Glide Spreadsheet (available in September), Photo Editor, Glide Email, Glide Share, Glide Chat and much more;
6) Free desktop and mobile social and business networking tools; and
7) 2 GBs of free online storage.
1) $5.00 a month or $49.95 a year gives you an additional 10GBs of storage
2) You can also purchase photo prints as well as music and videos (coming soon) through Glide Shops
Preamble: We the owners and operators of the Glide(TM) Service, in order to provide a more perfect service, establish rights for our users, ensure their tranquil use of our product, provide for a common defense against those who improperly seek private information, promote the user's general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity, do hereby establish the Bill of Rights for the users of Glide(TM) Service as follows:
ARTICLE I
We shall recognize the paramount importance of privacy to the users of
our service.
ARTICLE II
We shall not knowingly transmit or convey any information to third
parties regarding our customers.
ARTICLE III
We shall not target personalized advertising at users. Glide is free of
advertising.
ARTICLE IV
We shall take all reasonable steps necessary to maintain privacy of the
users of Glide(TM).
ARTICLE V
We shall take all reasonable steps to provide barriers against those
who seek to improperly obtain the information of our users.
ARTICLE VI
In the event of any breach of confidentiality, we will coordinate and
assist our customers in determining the source of that breach and prevent
further dissemination of the information.
ARTICLE VII
Whenever possible, we shall notify the customer that there has been an
attempt to access or improperly obtain their information, regardless of the
source.
ARTICLE VIII
Subject to reasonable protections of the company and applicable laws,
we agree to delete from our system any of your information upon termination
of our relationship.
ARTICLE IX
We shall remain vigilant in these goals.
The Glide(TM) Service, TransMedia and all of our affiliates are
committed to take all reasonable steps to protect the personal information
of our customers to ensure its confidentiality. A guiding force within our
company is to protect the personal liberties of our customers and provide
autonomy from those who would intrude on their lives.
COMMITTED THIS 28th DAY OF AUGUST, 2007.
TRANSMEDIA CORPORATION
By: Donald Leka
CEO
By: David Schwartz
Privacy Officer