They say, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” and the internet is no exception. Supposedly “free” services, be they email or social networking or what have you, all have their hidden costs. Facebook sells its users’ personal information, gmail uses email content for targeted advertising, and the whole of the internet, it seems, is increasingly susceptible to invasive monitoring from hackers and government intelligence agencies.
The problem, explains Pixeom co-founder and CEO Samir Nagar, is a system that privileges third-party service providers with control over and access to personal information.
”The public cloud services are all built on the foundation of the data center, and it’s a treasure trove of personal information that’s vulnerable to data breaches, or vulnerable to being accessed by the service providers, because they create their own encryption keys which lets them access your data.”
Privacy is the secret price of the “free” internet, but it doesn’t have to be.
Pixeom is a 16 GB personal data cloud device with built-in apps for file sharing, social networking and e-commerce. For a small, one-time fee, users can regain their information independence. The devices are infinitely scalable using external hard drives or other Pixeom boxes, and keep your information in the privacy of your home or office, where it belongs.
“Data centers are a thing of the past,” says Naga. “It’s time that users had total control over their personal storage and security. We should be allowed to own our data, make our own rules, and keep our privacy when we want it,”