![]() It has $2.6 million in funding, and has attracted sponsored content partners including Samsung, Australia Tourism, and online gaming platforms. To date, Vonvon’s various pieces of viral content have resulted in more than 200 million user interactions across 15 languages since the company launched in March. “There’s certainly no easy way for users to be sure.”Īnd as a startup trying to establish trust with a growing audience, Vonvon wants the public to see the company in a positive light. “Without looking at every single line of the code, you can’t be 100% sure,” he says. Even Gillula isn’t completely certain that Vonvon’s content isn’t siphoning data out, somehow. Good apps and nefarious ones can look too similar to the naked or uninformed eye. “At the same time, people may not realize that they don’t have to do it that way, and it’s entirely possible that they could have done it another way - a less conscientious developer could have done it differently.”Īnd that is the problem with my snap judgement. “They are doing it in the most privacy protective way they could, given the limitations of Facebook’s API,” says Gillula. Most Used Words, and the company’s other quizzes, seem to be run within the web browser in JavaScript, which means the data is parsed right there on the user’s computer, not far away in the cloud. In double-checking Hahn’s claims with Jeremy Gillula, staff technologist for the privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, it appears that Vonvon is indeed playing it safe with user data. ![]() In fact, says Hahn, the only bit of data that Vonvon receives from connecting a user to its services is the user’s Facebook ID number, anonymized digits that let returning users access their results on the company’s various quizzes and viral content such as “Are You A Psychopath?” “Who has a crush on you?” and “Which Pixar Superstar Captures You Perfectly?” ![]() When a Facebook user interacts with Vonvon’s content, their information continues to reside in the social network’s servers, and Vonvon cannot copy the data. On top of that, Hahn contends, the company cannot store any user data itself. By asking for permission for all of that user data up front, Vonvon wouldn’t have to repeatedly pester users for it again. According to Vonvon President David Hahn, Most Used Words requested all of this user info because the company runs a wide range of quizzes, and it hoped people would return to the website daily to take more of them.
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