Cliqz never has collected any personal data on its users, and never will. Over the course of the last 4 years, we started building a private search engine, to only realize that if we are to truly offer a usable alternative to navigate the web privately - we had to do much more. So we quickly found ourselves building an anti-tracking technology, anti-phishing, and anonymous rate limiting using Direct Anonymous Attestation. This research has been published / presented in the WWW Conference, Crypto and Privacy Village at DEF CON and CCC's Privacy Week.
We have packed all these technologies in desktop and mobile browsers. This is what we do and it's what got Mozilla interested in Cliqz, and why they are an investor, just like Burda Media. All the technologies we have built share 2 attributes:
1. None collect personal data
2. Rely on client-side logic (computers are powerful enough these days to be used for more than display interfaces)
Offers is part of how we monetize (we're exploring paid products too). Like any other technology at Cliqz, they share the same 2 attributes (No personal data, all triggering logic resides in the client). The code is open sourced here [1]. You can read a high-level description here [2].
We believe our approach is a healthy alternative to monetizing products on the web. At all times we allow the user to control what features from Cliqz they want to use; including offers. We understand there are plenty of reasons to be frustrated with the state of the web (we are too) - but blatantly rejecting any business model that brings privacy-preserving products to the market is not healthy.
[1]: https://github.com/cliqz-oss/browser-core/tree/master/module...
They present themselves as user privacy champions but primarily make money via, you guessed it, advertisements.
They are owned by Burda, a large German media organization who, again, make money by advertisement and processing of their user's data.
"We’re breaking new grounds when it comes to developing our business model. Bringing together targeting and privacy, we are currently testing a technology which allows companies and brands to show you relevant offers directly in the browser."[0]
[0] https://cliqz.com/en/about