Privacy-protecting search engine DuckDuckGo: $100 million
DuckDuckGothe search engine that puts user privacy first, recently closed a $100 million funding round, a company Blog said.
Investors included included OMERS Ventures, Thrive, GP Bullhound, Impact America Fund, Brian Acton, Tim Berners-Lee, Freada Kapor Klein, Mitch Kapor and others, the blog says.
The new finances give the company the ability to continue to grow.
The company will now be able to advise more users on a new internet privacy solution.
“Privacy is freedom. It treats people as people, not data points, and allows anyone online to escape the manipulation of online profiling,” the blog reads.
The company believes its efforts will go towards reducing data collection and targeting, which will hopefully help stop the spread of online misinformation and political polarization.
The blog notes that DuckDuckGo has been profitable since 2014 and generates over $100 million in revenue annually.
And the company launched new advertisements via billboards, radio and television in 175 metropolitan areas across the United States. The company was also considering putting these things into play for the European market and other places.
Data privacy is quickly becoming paramount in many places, including the European Union and the United States. In a survey of US customers, 87% of respondents said data privacy should be considered a human right.
Additionally, many respondents do not know how companies use their information, with around 70% of consumers complaining about this lack of transparency.
In the EU, there is also a consideration of how data collection has taken place, with legal action for collecting data from minors and other similar things.
YouTube, for example, could face problems if its practices are found to breach EU privacy rules.
Digital channels became more popular during the first months of the pandemic. But this has been accompanied by fraud issues, with fraudsters now leaning more heavily on the aforementioned security standards to commit crimes.
——————————
NEW PYMNTS DATA: ACCOUNT OPENING AND LOAN SERVICE IN THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT
On: Forty-two percent of US consumers are more likely to open accounts with financial institutions that facilitate automatic sharing of their bank details upon sign-up. The PYMNTS study Account opening and loan management in the digital environmentsurveyed 2,300 consumers to explore how FIs can leverage open banking to engage customers and create a better account opening experience.