Whistleblowers and digital pioneers have long been sounding the alarm about abuses of our privacy online.
Now, a slew of tech entrepreneurs are bidding to turn growing consciousness about the problem into a money-making industry and many showcased their skills at this week's Web Summit in Lisbon.
"Undeniably, with the new tensions that exist, obviously there is a movement among people to regain their right to privacy," organiser Paddy Cosgrave told AFP.
"Providing personalised encryption at the level of the device, so that any key stroke on your device is unreadable by a third party … is booming. There are many companies trying to make progress in this space," Cosgrave said.
"I believe there is an entire new industry around digital identity, data ownership, data management and data monetisation for yourself," said American Brittany Kaiser who helped lift the lid on data abuses at Cambridge Analytica which last year found itself embroiled in a scandal involving the misuse of Facebook data.
Kaiser's work at Cambridge Analytica is also a subject of a Netflix documentary, "The Great Hack".
- Blow the whistle -
Kaiser co-created a foundation "Own your data" in order to "blow the whistle on the whole industry" and denounce abuses of companies harvesting data without web users' explicit knowledge.
She warned that "it's going to be hard to get to the point of mass adoption" of products and services designed to allay privacy fears but sees a "wave of momentum" after a year-and-a-half of campaigning.
Brendan Eich, founder of the Brave browser, as well as Mozilla and Firefox and the man behind JavaScript, observed "small minorities can move markets, and that's happening".
The way ahead is "privacy by de ..
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