Why Divvi Up

Our goal is to provide a service that application owners—from government and public benefit entities to private companies—can use to easily collect user population metrics while respecting user privacy.

Many types of applications, from mobile and desktop apps to websites, generate metrics about their users. These metrics are valuable for application owners because they are the basis for insights into users’ behavior. Normally an application would send all of its metrics back to the app owners, either directly or through a middle-entity. Users simply have to trust that owners will respect their stated privacy and security policies.

Stated policy, however, is insufficient as a privacy safeguard. Once an app owner has user data, privacy policies can be violated either intentionally or accidentally. The mere possibility of privacy violations can erode trust in applications, making users less likely to want to engage. In addition, the presence of personally identifiable information is a liability that more organizations are worrying about since it can be unintentionally leaked or stolen in a breach.

Divvi Up is a service designed to resolve the tension between wanting to know information about a population of users and needing to collect information about individuals that might compromise their privacy.