The internet was built to connect people, openly and safely.
Over time, control shifted to a handful of Big Tech platforms. Personal data became centralised, harvested, and monetised. Users lost ownership of their own information.
We believe it’s time to reverse that shift. There is a way to return control to users, without breaking digital business models. We’ve built it.
Our founders, Arno Otto and Martijn van Dam have experienced the shift of the web and felt a calling to change this. They share the vision of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. With use of his Solid (Social Linked Data) protocol, we’re helping to rebuild the web as it was meant to be — one where data flows between people and platforms with full user control, not through surveillance and tracking.
Our mission is simple: make privacy usable, and data ethical again.
Utonomy was built to expand this technology beyond the Dutch media ecosystem. We’re bringing the same secure, ethical data infrastructure to e-commerce, publishers, and other digital businesses across Europe. With Utonomy, any organisation can now connect to the Datakluis infrastructure and access verified, consent-based user data — without ever compromising privacy.
In 2022 the Dutch Data Store Foundation was founded. After one year of research the development started of what is now called Upod.
Upod is launching together with Talpa Network. A large number of people will get introduced to Upod. New customers are already lining up.