Not for sale

Who is your data actually working for?

In 2026, a shut-down airline’s passenger records were sold to Google to train AI. It is not a scandal, it is the plan. A company built to return money to its owners will reach for the most valuable thing it holds, and that is usually your data.

While the company is winning, that looks like ad targeting, data deals and training a model on what you typed. When it loses, it looks like the auction. Either way, someone was always owed a return on your data.

We built Wysor so that our answer to that question could be different.

The business model

A company does not have to fail for your data to be put to work.

None of the companies below are in trouble. Each one turned what its users share into a revenue stream while thriving, in public, as the plan.

Uber, 2025

Where you travel and what you order

Opened to advertisers to target you

Gizmodo, 2025
Meta in the EU, 2025

Public Facebook and Instagram posts

Used to train its AI · object only by form

Irish Times, 2025
LinkedIn, 2024

Your posts and profile

Used to train its AI, on by default

Washington Post, 2024
Slack, 2024

Your workspace messages

Fed to its models unless you email to opt out

TechCrunch, 2024
X (Grok), 2024

European users’ public posts

Trained Grok until the Irish regulator forced a stop

Irish DPC, 2024
23andMe and GSK, 2018

The DNA of 5 million customers

Access sold to a drugmaker · $300M

CNBC, 2018

And when the company runs out of road

When a company runs out of road, your data does not get deleted. It gets sold.

In a sale or a bankruptcy, everything the company owns is an asset, and assets exist to be sold, to a buyer or to pay creditors. Your data is one of them, often the most valuable one left.

On the auction blockWound down

Passenger names, emails, internal chats

Spirit Airlines, wound down 2026

Sold to Google to train AI · $10MForbes, Aug 2026

The DNA of 15 million people

23andMe, bankrupt 2025

Put up for auction · court-approvedNPR, 2025

117 million customer records

RadioShack, bankrupt 2015

Auctioned · FTC forced most destroyedFTC, 2015

48 million shoppers, names and emails

Borders, bankrupt 2011

Sold to a rival · $13.9MFTC, 2011

600,000 users, wallets and transactions

Celsius, bankrupt 2022

Ruled part of the estate, up for saleSidley, 2023

Customer profiles, including children

Toysmart, bankrupt 2000

Listed for sale · FTC forced its destructionFTC, 2000

Customer addresses from a travel portal

Unister / fluege.de, insolvent 2016

Sold for €15,000 on a USB stick · a court voided itOLG Frankfurt, 2018

Slack history, email, documents, code

Shuttered startups, 2026

Sold to AI firms · $10k to $100k eachFast Company, Apr 2026

Everything of value, realised for creditors

What Wysor holds

Not an asset · Not for sale

Your messages. Your documents. Your client data.

Your data is not an asset on our books, so there is nothing here for a buyer or a creditor to price. What you put into Wysor stays yours.

How it is allowed to happen

A promise not to sell your data is only as durable as the company that made it.

EU law

GDPR does not exempt your data from the auction. It adds paperwork.

When an EU company becomes insolvent, the administrator’s duty is to turn its assets into cash for creditors, and a customer database is one of those assets. GDPR does not put it off limits; it adds conditions, such as notice and a window to object, and explicit consent before special categories like health data can change hands. When the Dutch travel site TravelBird went bankrupt in 2018, its receiver sold the customer database to a competitor, giving customers two weeks to opt out.

Penrose, Netherlands
The reason

It is not a betrayal. It is the business plan.

A company built to make a return for its owners will reach for its most valuable asset, and the data you hand it is usually exactly that. Renting it to advertisers, feeding it to a model, or selling it outright is not the company breaking its word. It is the company doing what it was built to do.

2015

A promise not to sell did not survive the auction

RadioShack had told customers, in its stores and online, that it would not sell their information. In bankruptcy, 117 million records went to the block anyway. It took the FTC and 36 state attorneys general to force most of it to be destroyed.

FTC, 2015
The way out

The only data that cannot be auctioned is data nobody holds as an asset

Your data never went onto a balance sheet as an asset, and it never will. There is nothing to realise and nothing to sell, whoever ends up owning the company.

Almost every company on this page runs on venture capital. It funds the growth, and in return it takes a share of the control, so the people who end up deciding what happens to your data are rarely the ones who first promised to protect it. Here is the math behind that.

Independent by design

We built Wysor so your data would never be an asset.

Not an asset to sell

Your data is held for you, encrypted, and never built into a dataset we could sell or train on. That does not change with who owns Wysor.

You are the customer

You pay for Wysor, so the business works when you are served well. There is no advertiser, no data buyer and no backer sitting between us and you.

Your data is not inventory

It is not on our books waiting for a buyer or a creditor to price it. It is yours, and it was never ours to sell.

The promise rests on architecture, not just intent. Your data is encrypted, we do not train on your conversations, and the AI providers behind Wysor operate under zero data retention: your request is processed, then deleted. See how that works.

For anyone who owes someone else confidentiality.

Doctors and practices
Lawyers and notaries
Tax advisors and auditors
HR and personnel records
Finance and insurance
Public sector and research