Academic Search Engine Knobull Fights To Keep Personal Data Secure

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Jan. 5, 2021 - PRLog -- Lynn Bentley, President of Knobull announced, "In the 21st century most are online. That means all of our personal information is online as well. The 21st century has also been the age of counter-terrorism, and these two facts combined have given immense importance to the debate on the importance of privacy. Is security so important that it is worth this violation of liberty and privacy?"

Also, rather than viewing the protection of privacy as a business's obligation to his customer base, Zuckerberg of Facebook, suggested that the very concept of personal privacy could be gradually disappearing. He questioned those given to an older business model based on caution over privacy and instead praising companies (like his) that could easily rise above such obviously out-of date-concerns.

An even darker defense of the end-of-privacy doctrine had been offered by Google's Eric Schmidt, who impugned the innocence of consumers, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," Schmidt stated in an interview, December 2009.

The ability of the fast-growing Internet data-mining companies to trivialize privacy concerns succeeded because the target audience of younger consumers was either indifferent to invasions of their privacy or ignorant of the extent and depth of that data collection. It was remarkable that an American social culture that had for so long been moored to a notion of individual sovereignty had, in a wink, become willing to surrender any such notion.

We were as a society voluntarily moving so much of that into digital spaces owned and managed by corporations we have no control over. This relinquishing of the most private information about one's essence and aspirations became the norm in a shockingly short period.

Also straining global confidence in Internet commerce was the shock of those outside the country who had bought into the myth that US-based multinationals were international in their obligations. That was a message that US companies, up against a saturated domestic market for their products, found particularly alarming, since they depend on global growth to please shareholders. Bentley continued, "For these reasons, Knobull adopted the themes 'Privacy Matters' and 'We Promote a Better Learning Experience' as a critical values."

Bentley concluded, "The end result is that our information becomes the raw material for a new commodity the company manages for its own purposes—binding users ever more tightly to Facebook and Google as their social home bases on the Internet. But to monetize clicks, these companys' research will most definitely also include exploiting purchasing tastes to benefit Google's and Facebook's true customers, the advertisers who want to sell you something. They are paying, after all; you are not. We will never monetize the collection and distribution of personal data!"