If you spend enough time online, you can collect a digital paper trail of accounts, logins, subscriptions, mailing lists, and passwords that were involved in a data breach. A new startup called Yorba is helping you better manage your ever-expanding digital footprint by releasing a versatile tool to keep your online life organized. Organize, monitor, and manage your online accounts, unsubscribe from mailing lists, cancel subscriptions, review our privacy policy, and more from our web-based dashboard.
The end result is a mint of your entire online life, so to speak.
Like Mint, Yorba doesn't keep any data of its own, so the similarities to older personal finance trackers are apt. Instead, it works by connecting to online accounts such as Gmail, and soon other online services and cloud storage providers. Yorba uses natural language processing and machine learning techniques to scan your email to discover digital “relationships” – the accounts you own, the services you subscribe to, and the mailing lists you join. You can also connect to financial institutions via Plaid integration or import accounts via CSV.
From the Yorba dashboard, you can view statistics about your interactions with different accounts and know what actions to take, such as resetting a password found in a data breach, canceling an account due to a weak privacy policy, or unsubscribing. You can decide. For example, a mailing list that sends spam.
Co-founder and CEO Chris Zeunstrom explains: “Our goal now is to slowly be able to incorporate tools that aggregate all of this to provide insights and then take actions directly from Yorba.”
Image credits: Yorba
Zeunstrom said he was inspired to take on the project after finding it difficult to concentrate due to being overloaded with emails across multiple accounts.
“All of these emails are basically points of vulnerability that can be compromised,” he points out. Zeunstrom started using a password manager to manage his accounts, but found that it didn't solve the problem.
“[Password managers] It’s great for collecting bloat, but it doesn’t help reduce it,” he says. “To enable digital relationships, we need something like Fitbit. We see Yoba as a relationship manager, striving to build better relationships between people and on the platforms they use. ,” Zeunström added.
Some of the features provided by Yorba are not unique.
Tools already exist to unsubscribe from email lists, such as Unroll.Me and Gmail's built-in unsubscribe feature. Services like Rocket Money (formerly Truebill) allow you to manage and cancel your subscriptions. But what makes Yorba different is that all these features and more are brought together under his one roof.
Image credits: Yorba
In addition to mailing list and subscription management, Yorba can also alert you to accounts associated with data breaches. This is a feature also offered by Password Manager, where you can find old accounts that are no longer in use and view statistics such as how often an account is used. See how often they send you emails or actually open those emails.
It can also analyze a company's privacy policy and give a rating based on how invasive or unethical it is. (The latter is provided in partnership with Amsterdam-based non-profit organization Terms of Service; Didn't Read, which is working to deploy machine learning to read and evaluate privacy policies. (The privacy policy is then checked by human reviewers. End.)
Yorba originally started as a research project three years ago, was later incorporated as a public benefit corporation, and entered private beta last year.
Image credits: Yorba
Beyond its features, Yorba's appeal lies in its ease of use. This is due to the fact that the project was initially funded by Zeunstrom's design company Ruca, so the team includes people with his UI/UX background. Instead of raising venture capital, Yorba is funded through his Ruca “endowment model.” Essentially, this means that when Ruca signs a contract with a customer, a portion of its profits goes into a fund that is distributed to other companies.
Zeunström then left New York-based Luca to run Yoruba full-time from Lisbon, he said.
Yorba's team also includes co-founder and CTO David Schmudde and CDO Nolan Cabeje. Zeunström originally connected with Schmudde when he tried to recruit him to Advocate.io, an early political technology startup. Schmudde turned down the job, but his interest in data privacy led him to join Yorba a few years later. Kabeje, on the other hand, is from Luka.
The company plans to expand its range of services by adding new services and features in the coming months. We are considering integrating with other services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and Proton Drive. Additionally, we're partnering with Tim Berners Lee's Solid, so everyone can bring their data to Yorba in a timely manner. However, Yorba does not store the data itself, it only acts as an organizational layer.
Later this spring, Yorba will also launch features related to the Data Rights Protocol's efforts to standardize consumer data rights requests, such as account deletion. The new feature will be similar to Just Delete Me, which guides consumers on how to delete their accounts on about 1,500 sites and services. However, Yorba directly supports account deletion for his 10,000 sites.
In the future, the company also aims to add the ability to update your business mailing address when you move, or update your credit card information when you get a new card.
Since launching public beta last month, Yorba has over 1,000 users, 160 of whom are premium subscribers. The Premium plan costs $6 per month, billed annually, and provides active data breach monitoring, subscription management, and unlimited actions to manage your online accounts.
“You don't need investors because basically the price is set just to make enough money to be self-sustaining,” Zeunström says.
However, Yorba is free to use for basic functions such as account scanning.