OptOutCode

Saying “No” to commercial surveillance is as easy as renaming your device & our app makes it even easier! Invented by Privacy4Cars, OptOutCode is a new Universal Opt-Out Mechanism that only requires to add the prefix 0$S = Do Not (zero) Sell (dollar) or Share (capital letter S) as the first three letters of the name of consumers’ smartphones, computers, and wi-fi router. More info at https://optoutcode.com/

OptOutCode has four distinguishing advantages:

1. It is truly Universal: OptOutCode is compatible with smartphones, laptops, tablets,routers, the apps that run on them and the IoTs they connect to, including vehicles, smart appliances, tracking beacons, and more.

2. It’s fully decentralized: OptOutCode does not require to build, maintain, query, or secure a central database of opting-out users, devices, or apps. The signal is detected locally: either by the programs and apps running on the device that has OptOutCode turned on (e.g., an app on a smartphone), or by other devices that connect to the device of the Consumer that has OptOutCode turned on (e.g. a SmartTV connected to a Wi-Fi router with OptOutCode on, a fitness watch connected to a smartphone with OptOutCode on). This architecture makes it privacy-preserving, more secure, without a single point of failure, cheaper, and faster.

3. It’s Consumer-friendly: All Consumers need to do to turn on OptOutCode is simply rename their devices by adding “0$S” as the first three characters. For instance, rename their phone from “My Phone” to “0$S My Phone”. Most Consumers can do it themselves by going through the settings of their devices in less than a minute, but we have also written code to automate the task of turning OptOutCode on or off with a simple “switch” on an app.

4. It’s business-friendly: Businesses can easily read and parse the “0$S” opt-out code from each device using backward-compatible and future proof protocols that require no special authorizations. We want to thank Professor Sebastian Zimmeck of Wesleyan University (credited with inventing GPC) for recently pointing out to us that Google has a somewhat similar protocol to allow users to opt-out of their Wi-Fi routers’ signals to be used by Google Maps, providing an independent industry validation that a portion of the name of a device can be used as an opt-out signal.

This app has three purposes:

1. It makes it even easier for consumers to turn on OptOutCode on their Android or iOS devices

2. It demonstrates how easy it is for companies who make apps (social media, gaming, dating, mapping, etc.) to detect OptOutCode and understand that consumer wants to opt-out of targeted advertising and other privacy-invading AdTech. Similarly, it demonstrates how easy it is for companies who make and/or deploy IoTs that connect to devices with OptOutCode to respect the privacy of those users.

3. It offers companies who want to promote privacy a simple way to integrate the OptOutCode “switch” into their own apps (we also created a banner they can add to their websites to help their web visitors enable Global Privacy Control (a Universal Opt-Out Mechanism for browsers) and OptOutCode to extend their protections beyond to web to apps and IoTs they connect to.