Identity on the fly Here is the startup for privacy-conscious | Tech for Good

Identity on the fly

Here is the startup for privacy-conscious. Two brothers, Arjun and Abhijay Bhatnagar, have founded Cloaked in Boston. Cloaked is a service working as an app or a browser extension that creates hidden, "cloaked" identities such as emails, phone numbers, passwords, and credit card numbers.

The service works as a password manager, but instead of saving passwords, it replaces your personal information with "cloaked" data for any selected online service. For example, early service users create identifiers for online banking and dating or just don't give Facebook their actual mobile number.

Users may personalize the created identities. For example, they choose which messages to forward from cloaked to personal emails and which will stay in the cloaked cloud. They can mute any person or company sending newsletters to their inbox, not bothering with the sometimes frustrating unsubscribe process. The same applies to getting off a call list - that one can actually be annoying: I get spam calls almost every day. I can also imagine girls giving cloaked phone numbers to guys at the party. Created emails and phone numbers can be turned on/off, snoozed, expired, or updated when compromised.

Currently, the app is free to use but plans to switch to a freemium model. The team has just raised $25 million to finalize the product and exit the beta stage.

The reasonable question a privacy-conscious audience may have is "why should I not give my data to all those online services but give it to Cloaked?" The team says each user has an encrypted database storing all their info and the keys to manage or delete it at any point. However, they all say something similar, don't they?

Meanwhile, I think the idea is brilliant for an average user, and the startup has an excellent chance to find its audience.

Cloaked website showing app at work

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