myON-ID Media GmbH: secure.me Ushers New Era of Individual Online Privacy Protection

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today secure.me, the leading German online service protecting your privacy and reputation, is introducing its global solution for carefree Internet and social network use. The Internet and social networks are evolving and changing so fast that even experienced Internet users can no longer keep an overview of their personal information that is making its way online. secure.me is helping consumers regain control over their privacy on the Internet and social networks. It also offers parents the chance to protect their children online. The service is currently set up to support Facebook in ten languages and can be used for free from anywhere in the world at www.secure.me. secure.me will soon also be available for monitoring publicly accessible Internet sites and other social networks.

Protection of Sensitive Personal Information A study published in October 2011 by Experian, an information service provider, showed that 91% of all adults in the U.S. use social media every month. They visit social network sites and photo sharing platforms, participate in online forums, and tag interesting articles or posts.

“Our life has long merged with the online world. We use online services, social networks and mobile apps so actively that it’s hard to keep track of every personal information about us, which is visible to others on the Internet – whether we put it there ourselves or it was placed there by friends, acquaintances or even complete strangers,” says Christian Sigl, founder of secure.me. “As a user, you’re on your own when it comes to protecting your privacy. Law doesn’t take effect as quickly as the market is developing. Privacy settings for individual services don’t help in the long run, because they change in pace with the market. Users can only control their own privacy if they can independently monitor it. Parents have to do this for their children. And that’s why we created secure.me.”

Protecting Children According to a study published by the Family Online Safety Institute in September 2011, 70% of parents in the U.S. are worried that their children might come into contact with sexual content online and 61% are concerned that their child could talk to strangers on the Internet or visit sites with explicit content. In addition, the study found out that 83% of parents whose children have a Facebook account have either logged in to their child’s account at some point or have added their child as a friend on Facebook.

“We have been setting the agenda for online reputation management in the German-speaking markets since 2007. In doing so, we have noticed that the need for parents to monitor and ensure their children’s safety on the Internet and social network sites has risen substantially – especially in recent months. In response to this need, we decided to take on the task of providing parents around the world with a daily overview of their children’s online activities – with the help of secure.me. We know that children and parents often don’t like being Facebook friends with each other. And we also know that parents don’t have the time to continuously monitor Facebook. We developed secure.me to solve this problem,” adds Christian Sigl.

Parents don’t even have to be registered with Facebook to take full advantage of the secure.me features.

Here’s how secure.me works for monitoring a Facebook account and the Facebook friends network: Once linked to a Facebook account, secure.me can be used free of charge. After a user’s secure.me account has been activated, secure.me provides reliable, around-the-clock monitoring of the user’s (or his or her children’s) personal Facebook profile and network of friends. If needed, secure.me can also analyze data and events from the past and compile the results for the user. If desired, secure.me can keep the user updated via email notifications. secure.me lets each user monitor up to three different Facebook accounts. The service has been developed as a Web app and is thus optimized for tablet PC use as well.

secure.me allows the user to monitor:

· Questionable content: secure.me identifies any critical topics or posts in the monitored Facebook profile and its network of friends. This is made possible by the use of language recognition technology. The user can also specify personalized keywords to monitor – in addition to those that have been predefined by secure.me.

· All activity: secure.me displays messages and comments that the Facebook member has posted on his or her own profile or on another member’s profile. secure.me also provides an overview of pages the Facebook user “liked” and the user’s new friends, events and check-ins.

· The personal profile: secure.me enables the user to monitor any comments or interactions from friends and Facebook apps that appear in the Facebook profile being monitored.

· Photos: secure.me uses biometric face recognition to identify photos in which the user or the user’s child is pictured, even if the person isn’t tagged in the photo. This photo monitoring feature can find photos both in the profile of the account being monitored and in its network of friends.

· Privacy settings: secure.me is able to identify sensitive personal information in the Facebook profile and to make recommendations for optimizing privacy.

· Malicious links: secure.me informs the user of any unsafe links, including those harboring viruses or other malicious programs, appearing in the monitored profile or its network of friends.

secure.me is already known in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland under the name Ruflotse and has established itself as the market leader for the protection of privacy and reputation online. The online service provider has over 50,000 paying customers in the German-speaking market alone. The protection of a user’s privacy and reputation is only possible if solutions are available in the user’s local language. Therefore, in order to meet the growing global demand for such services, the founders have taken steps toward internationalization and are implementing the online service in ten different languages. For its global positioning, the online service was renamed secure.me. Besides its headquarters in Munich, from which secure.me is promoting its development in the EMEA market, the company has now opened a new office in San Francisco, California.

About secure.me

secure.me is dedicated to a safe and carefree Internet experience. The online service protects the privacy of individuals and business owners and provides transparency regarding their reputation on the Internet. secure.me also empowers parents to keep their children safe on social networks such as Facebook. secure.me is available worldwide in ten different languages and at no cost. secure.me is based on the proven monitoring and content-analysis technology of the German online reputation management pioneer myON-ID Media GmbH, founded in 2006 by Mario Grobholz and Christian Sigl. myON-ID Media is backed by several investors including T-Venture, the venture capital company of Deutsche Telekom (German Telekom). The company is headquartered in Munich and has an office in San Francisco, California. Further information about secure.me is available at www.secure.me.

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