Winston Privacy

Winston Privacy, founded in 2018 by Richard Stokes, emerged from his 14-year tenure in the advertising technology industry. Stokes, previously the founder of AdGooroo.com and Global Head of Innovation for Kantar Media, grew concerned about the misuse of private user information by advertising companies. This experience, coupled with a Computer Science degree from the University of Illinois and an MBA from Kellogg/Northwestern University, motivated him to create a solution for consumer privacy.

The company developed a physical hardware device, named Winston, designed to provide household-level internet security. This plug-and-play device connects between a home's modem and router, aiming to protect every connected device on the network, including IoT devices. The core function of the Winston device is to filter and block corporate tracking, surveillance, ads, and malware. It achieves this by blocking cookies, tracking scripts, and preventing techniques like browser fingerprinting. The system also encrypts DNS requests to prevent internet service providers from monitoring browsing activity.

A key feature was its distributed peer-to-peer privacy mesh network, which anonymized a user's IP address by scrambling their web traffic with that of other Winston users. This approach differed from traditional VPNs by not routing traffic to a central server, but rather distributing it across its user base. Users could manage settings and monitor blocked activity through an online dashboard and a companion mobile app available for iOS and Android. The business model was based on an initial hardware purchase, which was priced at around $250, followed by an annual subscription fee for software updates and access to the privacy network. The company launched through a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019, which helped to fund the initial large-scale manufacturing.

Despite developing the technology and manufacturing a product, Winston Privacy was unable to generate sufficient consumer demand to sustain the hardware business. On August 7, 2022, the company was reported as out of business, and the Winston Privacy service was discontinued. As a result, the devices, which relied on the company's cloud infrastructure to function, were rendered inoperable.

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