Is Surf Legit? Debunking our biggest critics.
Is Surf Legit? Debunking our biggest critics.
Jack Lavorato
September 13, 2022
Jack Lavorato
September 13, 2022
Is Surf legit? This is a question we get on a daily basis because we seem too good to be true. Yes we are legit. Yes you can earn rewards by not changing your browsing behavior. Yes, your data is anonymized. So yes we are “legit”. Can that be the whole blog? Are we done here? I have a feeling you’re not convinced. Give me 5 minutes of your time and I’ll give you a way to earn reward by not changing your browsing activity.
There’s a good chance you don’t know exactly what Surf is or how it works so let’s go through it. Surf is a browsing extension that allows you to earn points that you can use towards exclusive gift cards and discounts from your favorite brands. If you don’t know what a browser extension is, think about Grammarly for example. A browser extension is basically an app you download through your browser which works in the background as you use that browser. We work with the world's largest browsers (Chrome, Safari, Opera, Brave, Firefox) and are currently only available on desktop. (Mobile extension coming soon!)
We only ask for your age, approximate location, and gender. WE DO NOT ask for personal information like your name or email address. We want to keep the data we collect anonymous, because we believe that’s what's right. If you want to learn how we make money with this data and subsequently give that money back to you.
We get asked all the time, why are you guys doing this? Most of the time it’s coming from a skeptical place, and we do understand the skepticism but this blog is here to explain why we are working so hard on Surf. Big tech has been profiting off our data for years and created a market for data that is astronomical. The crazy part is that we get nothing back for the data that creates this value. Our founders started this journey to put the power back into consumers' hands. The world is becoming more privacy conscious every day. There’s new regulations, Apple is making changes to iOS, and consumers want to protect their privacy and data. We found that if we can offer a service that collects ethical and anonymized data, while at the same time giving back to the people who truly own it we can make a difference in the data economy. Our “why” is focused on giving back to the consumers while simultaneously helping brands make strong product and marketing decisions.
Our founders are two highly accomplished and handsome (they made me put this in) individuals who are from Canada. Aanikh Kler is the youngest Canadian to have a top 3 charting app on the app store. Swish Goswami was Canada's Young Entrepreneur of the Year with a personal following of 200,000. Oh, and they were both Recipient of Canada’s
Top 20 under 20 award. I’m not sure if bragging about our co-founders will help gain trust but they really love talking about all their accomplishments. Our team has also grown with some of the most amazing people you’ll ever meet, except Doug that guy sucks (for the record we do not employ a guy like Doug that was just for comedic purposes, he got fired months ago).
At Surf we have 3 core values.
Transparency: people should be made aware of what data they are sharing.
Privacy: people should be able to manage/edit the data they share.
Compensation: people should be compensated for the data they share.
These values keep us grounded, and ensure that everyone on our team has the same mission in mind. We always want to protect the user's data. We also want you to have control over the data you share. Say your cat lays on your keyboard and goes to a totally embarrassing website that you don’t want Surf to collect, no problem you can delete that data point.
No! That’s the great part about the data we collect. There is no personally identifiable information that we, or the brands we sell data to, ever see. The only information we ask for is gender, age and approximate area. Even if you log onto Amazon for example we WILL NOT be able to tell who you are. We also don’t ask for your name. If that isn’t enough we bunch your data with others in your demographic so the data isn’t granular down to one individual. You are already giving your personal data away, Surf is the safest way to give data and we even reward you for it. It’s kind of ironic, we know.
Surf has been running giveaways for a while (another way to use your Surf points is to enter giveaways to win bigger prizes.) We also have strong social media analytics as we originally started as a brand where that was the focus. Brands like UFC, L’Oreal and EA trust us in that space, which give us and out users confidence that we’re doing something right. Let’s start by saying we partner with some of the world's largest brands. UFC, L’Oreal, and EA just to name a few. These companies wouldn’t work with a company that isn’t “legit”. Surf has built the confidence of massive brands and now we want the trust of potential users. Our user base is growing everyday and the metric we look at the most in terms of trust is number of referrals. The amount of referrals we see everyday is proof that people really do have confidence in our product.
Surf is legit. We care about your privacy and we care about a world where people get compensated for their data. We want brands to be able to make data driven decisions but they won’t be able to unless they use ethically sourced data. The world is changing and Surf is adapting with it, leading with our values. Surfing is unprecedented, sure, but that doesn’t make us scammers. If you don’t trust us, trust our over 100,000 users that refer us to their friends everyday.
