Redwood, Calif. — Reputation.com, an online privacy company, is creating a method for consumers to charge advertisers to access their information.
On Tuesday the company raised $41 million toward realizing that goal in a Series D financing round led by August Capital, with backing from Bessemer Venture Partners, JAFCO Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Floodgate Fund. The new funding will help the company in developing more tools to define and control user’s identity online.
Michael Fertik, CEO, says the underlying concept is to put users in control of their own information.“It’s like a vault where they can put data and get paid for it themselves,” he explained in an interview with VentureBeat.
Consumers generally give up some of this control when they use a free service, because selling their data is what finances the service.
“With the explosion of social computing — including gaming, social networks, online sharing, social media — we increasingly live our lives online,” Fertik said. “But that doesn’t mean we have to hand over our life’s keys to the Web. Digital identity control is a necessary antidote to the architecture of the Web, and one that consumers are demanding.”
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