The 1996 film, Jerry Maguire, launched the Internet meme, “Show me the money!” Products and services that protect your privacy cost money to create, maintain and operate. And those doing the work deserve a fair wage. While many of the products I recommend come at no or low cost, some do cost money. But if all products and services cost money, why are some of them free or nearly so? How can that be? And why are others more expensive? These are important questions. Let’s think through them together.
If a product or service is provided by a commercial company, expect to pay for it. Commercial companies are in business to make money. Marketplace competition sets the price. And while there may be a free basic offering, you can bet that it’s offered in the hope that you will upgrade to a paid service.
Free products and services also have a business model. Dedicated volunteers and contributions sustain many fine open source products. Advertising revenue supports others. I strongly recommend that you research and understand the business model of free products and services that you use. “Show me the money!” Because if the business model does not make sense, you are the product.
For the products and services I recommend in these posts, I’ve done the work for you and believe the underlying business model is sound. If you choose other offerings, what things might you consider?
The first question is what sort of infrastructure and/or ongoing development does the offering require? Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) require substantial worldwide computing infrastructure to provide a viable service. This is expensive and you should expect to pay for it. The same is true, to a lesser extent, for secure cloud backup services. Antivirus products must be continually updated to keep pace with constantly changing threats. Bad actors are quite innovative. This also costs money. Expect to pay for it. These services may be bundled. Antivirus products often also offer a VPN, cloud backup, a password manager, and fraud detection monitoring. Such offerings can be good value for money. But you are paying for it. You should very carefully evaluate free services that have substantial ongoing costs.
Other services have smaller ongoing costs and may be sustained by modest annual fees or donations. These include secure email, secure browsers and text messaging. Privacy preserving contextual advertising may provide income for secure web search and browsers. Contextual advertising shows you ads based only on your search criteria or the web page you are actively viewing. If you search on fly fishing, you may see ads for fly rods. This seems fair. If instead you see an ad for the new wide screen TV you searched for last month, you are being profiled by data brokers. Not so good.
Informational web sites may generate revenue through affiliate programs. If the site recommends a product and provides a link, they receive a small payment if you click through, at no cost to you. This also seems fair. Note that I do not take part in any affiliate programs on this site.
The open source community maintains excellent open source products that don’t require physical infrastructure or continual software updates. Donations are normally welcome. These products include password managers, file and disk encryption, and other niche products.
The message to take away is: the business model matters. It pays to understand it. If it makes little sense, you are the product. Your privacy will not be respected.
And if you use a free product, please consider making a contribution. Every little bit helps, and fair is fair.
Information provided in this post is subject to the disclaimer in the first post of this series.