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Take Back Control Of Your Personal Data, Then Sell It To Highest Bidder

A solution to wild data sharing?
A solution to wild data sharing?
Nicolas Rauline

PARIS – Retake control of your personal data and get paid for it. This is the straightforward concept behind the recently launched French startup Yes Profile.

On its platform, Yes Profile allows the user to create a profile with a certain amount of information – from email to age to interests and preferences such as favorite hot beverage or cereal.

“The data collected is totally anonymous, apart from the postal address. The conditions are completely transparent,” explains Yes Profile founder Christian-François Viala. “Users know exactly what content they are sharing, with whom, and how much they’re getting paid by brands for access to their profile. The current system is based on users’ profiles, but they don’t control their information anymore. We give the users their control back.”

Once part of the users’ profile is sent to advertisers, users receive personalized offers from the brand. All of which are centralized on the Yes Profile platform: there is no need to be logged in to be able to see them.

The benefits users may expect from every advertising campaign are of course relatively limited, stretching from a few cents to a few euros. But, “revenues for each user could reach 100 euros a month,” says Viala. Users can even redirect the funds to an organization of their choice. Yes Profile has a partnership with Doctors of the World.

“The brands are interested in our concept because the information we supply them with is guaranteed authentic,” says Viala. He says his start-up provides the cheapest prices on the market: half as much as it would cost to obtain an email base, for instance, with superior click rates. On the fee paid by the advertiser, 65% goes to the user and 35% to Yes Profile.

The company will soon launch its iOS and Android apps. Yes Profile is aiming for 500,000 users by the end of the year and hoping to enter the U.S. and UK markets before summer.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

How Much Does Xi Jinping Care About Putin's ICC Arrest Warrant?

After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Moscow for a three-day visit. How far will he be willing to go to support Putin, a fugitive from international justice?

Photo of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev

Extended meeting of Russian Interior Ministry board on Monday, March 20

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — Since Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin said last year that the friendship between their nations was "boundless," the world has wondered where the limits really lie. The Chinese president's three-day visit to Russia, which began Monday, gives us an opportunity to assess.

Xi's visit is important in many ways, particularly because the International Criminal Court has just issued an arrest warrant against Putin for his role in forcibly sending thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia. For Putin, there could be no better response to this international court, which he does not recognize, than to appear alongside the president of a great country, which, like Russia, is also a permanent member of the UN Security Council. How isolated can Putin really be, when the leader of 1.5 billion people in China comes to visit?

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