Protect and monetize your data on your own terms with TIKI

Stack CommerceOctober 12th, 2021In this article: partner, stackcommerce, gearThis content is made possible by our sponsor; it is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Engadget’s editorial staff.

In simpler times, if you wanted to grow your wealth, you would buy valuable physical assets like real estate or gold. But in the digital age, the best currency is information. Companies know that if they can collect enough details about you — what you like, what you care about, where you spend your time and all the hows and whys of your purchases — they can increase their chances of selling to you.

You and your mobile devices are generating thousands of data points every day. Information is this generation’s Gold Rush, and the next several decades could very well be defined by who ultimately controls and interprets all that knowledge.

TIKI is wholeheartedly behind the idea that your data should absolutely and unequivocally belong to you. And if the upstart firm and its tech-forward app have any say in the issue, only you will be the one with control over exactly how your information is ultimately used.

TIKI lets you choose how your data is shared

The company’s approach to safeguarding user information online is two-pronged, surprisingly easy and devilishly comprehensive. It starts with the TIKI app, which immediately monitors for cookies, pixels, hacking and other devious attempts by retailers, platforms and others to farm data from your devices based on your activity.

Instead of allowing apps like Facebook or Google to harvest any data you didn’t explicitly give them, TIKI essentially pushes the power back to you by letting you make quick decisions about your data, presented in an almost Tinder-link swipe feature.

If you’re OK with Amazon knowing you just bought groceries from another store, swipe right and approve it. But if you don’t want Google tracking your directions as you run daily errands, swipe left and block ’em. TIKI makes it incredibly easy to regulate the flow of your information so you decide what data goes to whom. That leads to the true masterstroke of the TIKI interface, where it allows users to essentially monetize all that valuable marketing data they create for themselves. TIKI assesses your information, analyzes its importance to a retailer or marketer, then serves as a bridge for that approved outlet to purchase the data directly from you. If you choose to sell, TIKI will even anonymize your data so that you remain 100 percent private.

Armed with those details, marketing data that would have otherwise been harvested by Facebook or Target, then sold to other marketers, will instead be sold by you. You get the money yourself, which can then be withdrawn as cash or crypto or even donated to a charity or cause of choice. TIKI makes a pair of absolute promises: that information remains 100 percent controlled by each user and that 100 percent of the proceeds of data sales goes back to the original owner of that data.

You can invest in TIKI now and make money protecting data

TIKI takes no cut from information sales; the company makes its money through a 10 percent transaction fee paid by companies buying user information. So if 100,000 TIKI users make an average of $120 a year selling their information, that’s about $1.2 million in annual revenue coming back to TIKI.

Backed by 120,000 users since the app went live earlier this year, TIKI is looking to take its app to the next level. Through their StartEngine page, TIKI is offering equity to bring in a host of new investors to expand the app’s reach.

With investments of as little as $250, buyers can get in on the opening stages of TIKI’s promising offering. Those early angel investors include former Standard and Poor’s president Deven Sharma, who praised TIKI’s ability to let users protect and control their data, along with ease of use and transparency of the TIKI app.

Right now, investors can head to the TIKI StartEngine page and get in on the ground floor of TIKI’s inventive approach to data privacy.

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