Oscobo is a UK-based company founded by Fred Cornell (ex-Yahoo) and Rob Perin (ex-BlackBerry), towards a belief they both shared – that personal data should remain just that, personal. Disillusioned with the corporate world and that the private individual is paying for what seems to be “free” internet content, they felt it was time to turn the tables the other way round. Oscobo is the only UK based Privacy Search Engine that does not track or store the user’s data.
So where does the name Oscobo come from?
Like all the best companies, we’ve taken some creative license with the name. “Scobo” in Latin means “to look into”, “to probe” or “to discover”. The letter “O” in Swedish, means “not” or “non”. So, Oscobo, to us, means “not to probe, not to track”.
So why use Oscobo? I have nothing to hide.
Most of us have nothing to hide. However, they don’t always feel comfortable with our personal search history being packaged up and sold to the highest bidder. At the end of the day it can include information such as medical history and financial status. Any data that is held on a server can be hacked or misused. At Oscobo they believe that this is not acceptable. It’s pretty simple really. They will not store or mess around with your personal data.
In addition to being used to target particular users with ads, Perin says that you could even end up seeing higher prices for certain products, depending on who you are.
“Over months and years a consumers’ personal history both in and out of a number of high profile search engines is tracked to monitor their online activity. This data is then stored, profiled, and sold to advertisers who bombard the consumer with spam, banner ads, and potentially cold calls.
Worse of all it can even increase the online prices of goods and services based purely on who they are perceived to be online.”
if you want highly-personalized results (and your data sold to third-parties) then you’ll probably want to stick with the regular ol’ Google, Yahoo or Bing options.
To test the service out, just point your browser at Oscobo.co.uk or install the Chrome extension.
