Hello world!
My name is Christian Bennefeld and I am the co-founder of eBlocker.
This is my first blog post and I’d like to share what inspired me to
start eBlocker. This is a true story!
After working in the IT-security industry for several years, I founded
the web-analytics startup eTracker here in Germany. From 2000 until 2013
I led it as the CEO and turned it into one of Europe’s leading analytics
providers.
With eTracker I’ve raised the first 100% data privacy compliant tracking
service that fully obeys the strict EU and German privacy laws. In
contrast to most competitors I followed this path because I believe that
privacy is a very important principle for our society and the basis for
our democracy.
As I know the tracking industry very well, I am pretty aware of what’s
going on behind the scenes. It’s not some gathering of anonymous web
data. It’s full personal surveillance of every move we make online
in order to retrieve detailed personality profiles.
Linked to our names, addresses, emails and devices.
That’s why I’ve used almost every tool to prevent tracking and sneaking
into my privacy on my PC. When the iPad moved into my flat things
changed. Ads started following me again. Trackers were gathering all my
surfing habits. And when I was looking for a hotel room,
I noticed that dynamic pricing offered me higher prices on my iPad than on my PC.
I felt defenseless since there were no comprehensive
privacy tools available for the iPad.
After reading an article about data being gathered by my Samsung
SmartTV, I disconnected it from the network and wanted to do the same
with my PS4 – but most games didn’t run anymore.
That’s when I had the first thought about a local device that was fully
under my control to block the Internet surveillance
for all my Internet devices. The idea for the eBlocker was born.
In my next Blogpost I’ll go more into detail about the founding story
and how Boris came into the game.