The Israeli Startup, Mine, enabling consumers to reclaim their personal data and reduce personal data privacy risks, today launched its product to all U.S. consumers and announced a $9.5 million Series A round led by Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI-focused venture fund (their first investment in an Israeli startup), with participation from e.ventures, MassMutual Ventures, and existing investors Battery Ventures and Saban Ventures. The round, raised entirely remotely in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, will allow Mine to build out new products enabling consumers worldwide to fully control how their personal data is used and allow businesses to automatically process “Right-To-Be-Forgotten” requests. Following a successful European launch earlier this year, Mine has facilitated more than one million data reclamation requests in 2020 alone.
Mine was founded, based on the insight that on the one hand, the 'Internet without risks' has yet to be invented and that information and data breaches are an established fact that will continue to plague online users for a long time to come; while on the other hand, users are eager to continue to enjoying everything that the Internet has to offer, even at the cost of exposing some of their personal data such as identification and credit details, etc. In order to bridge this tension between the need to share our personal data when using online services and the concern of our data being exposed through data breaches or hacking Mine decided it was time to offer users easy-to-use tools that would allow users to continue benefiting from the Internet, without changing their online behavior. Their solution allows consumers to discover what companies hold their personal data on an ongoing basis and gives them full control to decide where they want to keep their data and gives them the option of submitting a deletion request (The Right-To-Be-Forgotten) for services they no longer use. In this way, Mine's solution focuses on providing full transparency and choice, and helps users to control the way in which their online information is used.
With the growth of social networks and personal data collection worldwide, privacy has become a concern for many, with 87% of Americans now viewing data privacy rights as a human right. Despite this concern, on average, 350 companies (450 companies among Israeli users) hold a given consumer’s personal data such as their identity and financial information. These digital traces pose significant identity theft risks for consumers and are abused daily by hackers and nefarious organizations, even though in about 80% of the cases, this data was given for a one-time interaction. Mine exists to empower consumers to discover and manage their data by giving the tools to request the removal of their personal data automatically from any company allowing transparency and choice online. The team at Mine poses a fair question: Why should we leave our personal data in places that do longer provide us with value? They believe that the best way to protect yourself from data breaches that occur daily, is by removing your data from places where you don’t need it, especially as you can always sign-up or purchase a service again.
With lawmakers enacting GDPR in Europe and CCPA in California, technologies and consumers have been unable to keep up with the intricacies and details of these complicated laws. Mine provides an easy-to-use platform, powered by AI, to allow the average consumer to manage their personal data across the internet without needing to change their online behavior.
"Data privacy is without a doubt a mainstream concern, but most people don’t know how to control who holds their personal data. We want to change this by making privacy regulations accessible and easy for everyone, so consumers can set their own terms and draw the line on what data they are willing to share" said Gal Ringel, Co-founder, and CEO of Mine. "By streamlining the “Right-To-Be-Forgotten” processes we are bridging the gap between consumers and companies which will shape a new future of data ownership.