New apps for a safer internet (+ free stickers)

Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at Blockstack.

A quick recap of the past few weeks:

• An Instagram vulnerability exposed user accounts and phone numbers
• The DMV is selling your data for millions
• The popular CamScanner app was exposed as a vehicle for malware
• Biometric data for over a million people was left for the taking

It’s getting so bad, in fact, that Google and Facebook have joined Microsoft by resorting to paying people for finding and reporting apps that misuse people’s data. It seems we’re fighting a losing battle.

But our friends at Blockstack have been working on this problem for a while now. They just closed another $23 million in a historic SEC-qualified token sale to continue supporting a new generation of apps that can’t abuse users. In these apps, data always lives with the user and isn’t exposed in large honeypots to be bought or stolen.

Since July, 85 new apps that “can’t be evil” by design have been added to the Blockstack network, which counts over 250 apps in total. Here are a few exciting recent additions:

🔎 Land Ho! is an incognito search engine

💯 BlackHole is a blockchain-based file transfer

🙌 Social Vault is encrypted storage for your Facebook data

📓 Safe Notes lets you securely annotate and store your PDF docs

👋 Help A Stranger Out lets you give anonymous acts of kindness to strangers

👏 POW! lets you securely take charge of your menstrual cycle

🔓 ProperPass is a password manager that keeps your data safe

💸 trakkin.me pays you for the data you generate when browsing

Even if you’re not ready to switch from your favorite centralized app, you can show your support for the “apps that can’t be evil” movement by setting up a Blockstack ID and getting your free stickers. 🙌