Yuliya Boldyryeva
It’s that time of year again - the time to reflect on the events of the past year and think about everything that was accomplished (or not accomplished) throughout the year.
Whether or not you were able to undertake what you wanted in 2021, this is another year that will mark history on a global scale.
2021 has brought us hope that the pandemic is close to its end, with many people being able to get vaccinated, return back to their normal working environments and finally reunite with their coworkers, friends, and family. Many realized how much they missed being able to go out and enjoy attractions such as concerts and social events, others have adapted to the post-pandemic way of living and permanently changed their lifestyles. Either way, this has been a year of change and adaptation for all.
Although not for long (due to the omicron variant), our team was thankful to go back to our AppEsteem office and see each other in person again. We have all gotten used to the convenience of working from home, but we realized that it makes a big difference physically being in the same room with the team and discussing our ideas face-to-face with each other.
And there were a lot of great ideas!
Here are some of our biggest accomplishments of 2021:
- On our app certification side, we certified 447 app versions. This is the first year in history when we had more certifications than Deceptors (only 293). It shows that we have made real progress in cleaning up the industry, and we believe that this is something worth celebrating! We are thankful to all our customers who committed to certifying their apps and helping us clean the Internet.
- We made sure our customers were prepared for the release of ACR-008 in November 2021. The intent of this ACR is that consumers can find the free options in the application software as easily as they can find the purchase option. So, if the software offers free fixes, they need to be of the same quality as those in the paid version and should not be difficult or tedious to obtain.
- In our Insiders’ calls this year, we also discussed restricting your certified apps to a certified-only certificate. It is important to never distribute non-certified versions of an app signed with the same certificate because many AV’s trust our certified apps list and we want to make their work easier. Make sure to only distribute what is on our certified list in order to avoid confusion from AV’s.
- On a slightly different topic, we designed our own Internet Safety Portal (Internet Safety Portal (blur.live)) for our browser extension Blur.live (live). It includes useful information such as the number of ads any website has, information about Deceptor apps, and our very own Internet Safety Blog. In the next year, we are hoping to add more features to our blog to make it more shareable and interactive with our readers. For now, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook and stay tuned for updates about our blog.
- We were also getting pretty fed up with all the clutter that comes up when we use a search engine to browse the web, so we decided to create our own, clean search engine instead - Browse.live (https://browse.live/). We really don’t like the idea of our search histories being used against us by big-brand search companies to target us with advertisements and exploit us. We know that most people feel the same way, which is why we are now on a mission to reduce Internet pollution on a global level and help provide people with a cleaner and more private Internet. We know this won’t be easy, but we are up to the challenge and believe that once people experience this new clean way of browsing, they won’t be able to go back. This is our biggest aspiration for 2022 and we hope that you will take part in it and make the next year safer for everyone, both in-person and on the web.
Wow, what a year! We sincerely hope you all are staying safe and healthy and wish you all a wonderful and productive year ahead!
