Your digital footprint consists of personal data traces you leave behind every time you interact with a digital service. These traces could include different types of data, such as your name, email address, home or work address, phone number, credit card information, passport, social security, identification number, behavioral data, and much, much more.

During your daily online interactions with digital services, you leave behind hundreds of digital traces. Own discovered that almost 90% of these traces could be found through your emails’ subject lines. Examples of these subject lines could be: "Welcome to Facebook" or "Your Amazon Receipt.” By connecting your primary email with Own, we can help you discover your digital footprint and understand which companies are holding your data, so you can decide where your data should and shouldn’t be.

We built a non-intrusive technology that reconstructs your footprint by scanning your email history. Own identifies companies that are most likely to have collected your personal data, based on the subject lines and the sender (the digital service), and the number of times they appear in your inbox. Our AI then independently locates and scans these companies’ privacy policies to determine what kind of information they collect on their users. Own does all this without reading or storing any of the user’s emails. Your data remains truly yours.

Own has built a strong technology to provide users with value while using the bare minimum of personal data. The data we use to keep you in control of your digital footprint is: your email address, the list of companies we identified in your footprint, and the number of interactions with each of them. We are highly transparent about the data that we collect; At any time, you can go to your Own profile and get a copy of the data we collect about you so you will see for yourself exactly what we collect.

Every company states the type of data that they process and collect in their privacy policy and terms of use. Companies can ask you for different personal data based on the type of account you have with them. For example, if you signed up for a new shopping website, you might have provided your email, name, and preferences, but when you make a purchase your financial information is also shared. Our technology automatically analyses the companies’ policies and data structures to provide you with a calculated estimation of the types of data they might hold about you.

Our technology is an intricate process that requires some analyzing time. The initial scan that allows you to start taking control of your data with your first visit in the app takes about 30 seconds (sweet, right?). If you have a big footprint, it might take a little longer to complete, so the discovery process continues in the background. We inform you inside the app and with an email once the discovery is completed. After the initial discovery, we keep you in control of your data by continuously updating you about new companies holding your data in your footprint. This way so you can continue enjoying the internet feeling secure and in control.