About the Founder

     I’ve spent well over two decades in sales and marketing with a front-row seat to the rise of surveillance capitalism. In 2012, I jumped into digital marketing, the engine room of surveillance capitalism—helping small- and mid-sized businesses track clicks, squeeze conversions, and mine data from people who never gave meaningful consent. And I got good at it.
 
     I told myself I was helping mom-and-pop shops compete. That I was giving them a fighting chance.  But what I was really doing was installing surveillance into their businesses—and into their customers’ lives—one “best practice” at a time.


     I dropped in Google cookies and Facebook pixels like they were harmless. I copy-pasted scripts, hit publish, and called it “optimization.” I watched the dashboards light up, nodded at the charts, and sold it back to them as better ROI (Return on Investment) and higher KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).  And the whole time, I was helping make the unthinkable feel normal.


    As a consumer and a digital marketer, I swallowed the same garbage everyone else did:
 

  • “if you’re not doing anything wrong, what do you care about a little surveillance?” 
  • “anonymized data” is harmless
  • “it’s FREE!” 
  • targeted ads are a net good
  • this is just the cost of progress
  • there wasn’t much I could do.


     The money was good, the dashboards were shiny and capitalism’s friction-less distractions made me comfortable—and complacent.
 
     Then it stopped feeling like strategy and started feeling like betrayal. I watched manipulative algorithms distort attention, damage mental health, and polarize our communities. While Big Tech laughed their way to the bank as revenue and stock prices soared. Then when it cozied up to weapons manufacturers and helped enable atrocities, it stopped being abstract. It became personal.
 
    Now, through OccuNX, I’m a voice of reason (and sometimes sarcasm) for people who don’t realize what’s at stake. I help businesses, schools, and households reduce data exposure and shut down quiet tracking. I research the surveillance economy, map where the leaks happen, and help implement operational controls that hold up—safer settings, safer workflows, and fewer third parties embedded in daily operations. Tools and hardware when needed. Online—and in the real world.
 
     I’m a quirky, fast-talking New Yorker from Long Island who’s seen the toxic side of today’s “smart” ecosystem up close. My mission is simple: give people the information they need to make informed choices—without talking down to them, fear-mongering, or pretending privacy is a lost cause.


   I founded OccuNX to share what I learned on the way out of Big Tech’s deep valley. I build privacy-first tech stacks for real people who want to live online without being watched. This isn’t about paranoia. It’s about power.
 
I believe:

    Everyone deserves digital tools that don’t spy on them.
    Convenience shouldn’t cost your soul.
    You can still do cool stuff online without feeding the beast.
   If you’re ready to unplug from the algorithm, disrupt Big Tech and take your data—and your dignity- back, welcome to OccuNX.

Shad Khattab