Hey there!

I know you're expecting a video update, and I hope to provide one soon. Unfortunately, I've had a few setbacks with my computer, and I've ordered parts to get things running again, so progress was limited.

You may not know this, but my full-time job is as a software consultant. All that means is that I help companies build software better than they do today. One area that I make sure has a lot of focus is security and privacy, and I want to talk a little bit about that and how I'm trying to put my money where my mouth is.

When you're on a website and you see an ad there are lots of ways that ad shows up, but one fascinating goes roughly like this:

1. You begin to load the page.
2. A code snippet takes what it knows about you and the page you're loading and asks for an advertisement.
3. A real-time bidding system gets the request and starts an auction with information about you and the page you're loading.
4. Thousands of advertisers receive that information and bid on showing you a specific advertisement.
5. The winning bid's ad gets shown to you.

This all happens in 1/10th of a second.

As wild as that is, let's focus on the part where before the page loads, a ton of information about you and what you're doing is sent to thousands and thousands of companies.

What kind of information? More than you'd believe. A huge industry exists to connect everything you ever do online to an ever-growing dataset about you. This data set can include things like:

• Name, email, and social account handles
• Activity on websites over time
• What you click on on each site
• Where you physically are over time
• What hardware and software you're using

There is a lot more since most people grant additional access to photos, emails, social history, and microphones, but hopefully, you're getting the idea.

Some companies' entire business models depend on collecting and using this information. Many, however, collect and aggregate information because they can.

I believe that your data is your data, not mine.

What does that mean in terms of Reko Day? Let me give an example: You and I start talking one day, and I think I'd like to give you a free subscription to the app. For almost product in the world, this would be as simple as looking up your account by your email address or name or some other data I have about you.

The way I've built Reko Day, you have the ability to keep your name and email private from me. Sadly that means I can't give you a free subscription because I literally cannot locate you by any personal information.

This means that while Reko Day continues to make local produce available to communities, it also furthers its mission of making it safe for people who use the app.

I just thought I'd share a bit about a topic that I'm passionate about that will help keep all of us a little bit safer.

Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Ryan