Introducing,
A New Level of Protection
Meet the founder
My name is Claudiu Cogalniceanu, founder of FindMyData, an organisation specialised in data and user privacy. FindMyData offers a privacy enhancing service, mData, designed to empower people to take control and make decisions regarding their personal information in the digital environment.
Mission and vision
Our mission here at FindMyData, is to make privacy a default feature everywhere. At the moment, our privacy is treated backwards, where you have to opt-out of different data processes. Our plan is to change this to an opt-in, where people could have the opportunity to opt for more personalised ads or for data selling, to name a few.
How it started
I was always curious and concerned about my personal information in the digital environment. I always wondered how and why I had so many spam emails and scam attempts, and I started to question how these people obtained my personal data, and from where.
I started researching, and finally I got my answer: I found that companies shared and sold my personal information, and many times it was bought by scammers.
This pushed me to search for a solution to stop getting scammed, and I finally found it. I tested my idea on myself, and after I saw that it worked and I actually started to get less and less spams and scam attempts, I saw the opportunity to share my idea and start helping people facing the same issues as I did.
How FindMyData developed over time
FindMyData has really developed since its beginning. When I started FindMyData, I offered users the ability to track their personal information and see which companies have, find how they’ve obtained that information, and if the company has shared or sold that personal information to third-parties. Users also had the ability to delete their data from companies they didn’t use anymore or that have obtained that info from sources other than direct. Besides this, people had the option to stop organisations of any type (local councils, private companies, hospitals etc.) from sharing or selling their personal data.
First attempt at our logo design
Our first platform
FindMyData's first live event
I am proud to say that FindMyData is not a static business, and it continually evolves. This is why, we had an official service launch live streamed online, where I introduced our new and updated service, called mData. With mData we have introduced 2 new features:
- Child’s privacy protection: this is a unique service specifically designed for parents, which enables them to protect and preserve their children’s personal information online. Just like our personal information is shared and/or sold online, our children’s data is (many times) going through the same process and it is just as exploited. This is why it’s important to preserve our data as soon as possible, and not wait until it’s too late.
- Scam Prevention Program: this feature provides weekly updates to our users about the latest scams and teaches how to protect against them. In 2021, we have seen a total loss of over £2.35 billion due to scams in UK alone. Due the continuous trend of data selling, the global Covid pandemic, the rise in online shopping, and the scammer’s ability to impersonate genuine businesses, we have seen an increase in the number of scams and the total financial loss in 2021 compared to 2020, which is likely to raise in the coming months and years. Our Scam Prevention Program is included in our mData service, but it also comes as a free feature available for everyone that wants to protect against scams.
Latest update
In 2021 we have also seen an increase in the number of data breaches/leeks all around the world. This is likely due to the pandemic (again) since most of us have started working from home, which has lead to over 10 billion pieces of information exposed in data breaches. Unfortunately, all of us has been exposed to at least 1 data breach, and, most of the time, we are not informed about these.
This pushed us to add a whole new feature to our mData service, Data breach reports, where we offer our users monthly breach reports and inform them if they have been exposed in any known data breaches.
£5000
Reward tiers
£10
Get featured as a Privacy Advocate on our social media.
£20
Get free access to our platform for a month.
£50
Get free access to our platform for a whole year.
£100
Get access to a live webinar with Claudiu discussing subjects of your choice around data privacy.
£200
Get featured as a Privacy Advocate on our next live event this fall.
£300
Get all the rewards presented and a personalised sticker with FindMyData Logo.
We achieve our objective
Our mission is to make data privacy easier and accessible to everyone.
By achieving our objective, we will be able to raise awareness about our services, and attract new users to our platform.
We are working to change the world for the better and make privacy a default feature everywhere.
We are stronger together.
How will the money be used:
- improve user experience
- grow our team
- create meaningful partnerships and collaborations with publications and influencers in order to raise awareness about the platform
- ethical advertising campaigns (search term only advertising – we’re trying to brake the pattern of data collection and exploitation, not take part in it)
We don't meet the target
Obviously this is not what we want, but it’s not the end of the world.
Our mission and vision to make privacy a default feature remains our no1 priority. Based on this, we have a few contingency plans in place. Depending on how much we will raise, we will be able to do the following:
- £1000 raised – ethical advertising campaigns
- £2000 raised – will enable us to release one ethical ad campaign and create 1-2 partnerships with publications or influencers
- £3000 raised: 2 ethical ad campaigns, partnerships with publications and influencers
- £4000 raised: improve user experience, 2 ethical ad campaigns, partnerships with publications and influencers