There’s a transparent bathroom ad outside my office, and a VPN company created it

Imagine leaving your office to grab some lunch and come across a truck with a man casually sitting on a toilet in the middle of a transparent cargo area. Well, that’s what happened to me and my colleagues yesterday, May 9, 2024, in London.

The bizarre scene is not part of a movie, a joke or a bet gone wrong. It’s actually a provocative guerrilla marketing move from one of the best VPN providers on the market. “How much are you willing to share?” That’s Surfshark’s message, written in giant letters on the side of the truck in front of us.

Surfshark chose London to question people’s tendency to compromise our privacy in today’s digital landscape. Most of us are ready to post the most sensitive and private moments of our lives on social media platforms for a handful of likes. But it’s contradictory that we have precise boundaries when it comes to the offline world, but maybe that shouldn’t be the case.

A data privacy paradox

A VPN, short for Virtual Private Network, is security software that aims to increase anonymity online to hide activity. As such, it is part of Surfshark’s daily routine to keep an eye on all the various issues related to online privacy.

The company has been reporting data breaches for some time. For example, Surfshark’s research team has put together a Data Breach Map that records incidents that have occurred over the past twenty years. The numbers are shocking: approximately 6.5 billion unique user accounts have been compromised.

“Data breaches remain an ongoing global threat. A total of 17.2 billion accounts have been compromised since 2004, and approximately 6.5 billion of those have unique email addresses. That means a single email address is hacked approximately three times on a global scale. ” says Lina Survila, spokesperson at Surfshark.

This data is frightening, but not entirely new. The use of VPNs, antivirus software and similar tools proves that more and more people are aware of these online risks.

However, it’s still not enough to stop people from using data-hungry services like Meta or Google, or sharing personal information on the Internet every day. Even children cannot escape the sharing activities of adults, which is the morbid fascination of broadcasting their youth online. How many parents in real life would install a public camera in their children’s bedroom?

This friction between people’s attitudes towards privacy in the offline and online worlds is known as the data privacy paradox. Surfshark’s experiment wants people to wonder why they feel comfortable sharing intimate data on their social accounts, but not this intimate (and most natural) act.

“The campaign aims to spark a discussion about online privacy. Just as you don’t want the walls of your toilet to be transparent, you also shouldn’t want your data to be easily accessible to third (and possibly malicious) parties” , says Survila. told me. “We want people to take their privacy seriously by being careful when sharing data online and using the right cybersecurity tools (like a VPN and antivirus) when browsing the web.”

To spread its message, the company spent the day driving one transparent lorry with a toilet across various locations in London. While Tower Bridge served as the main stop, Surfshark also visited busy office areas, including Ny Breaking, stopping at each location for about half an hour.

Surfshark’s choice to run its awareness campaign in London isn’t happening in a vacuum either. The UK has witnessed a significant increase in data breach incidents since 2004, rising to seventh among the most affected countries in the world, according to Surfshark. The company estimates that as many as a billion pieces of personal data have been exposed during this period.

“On average, each email address has three additional data points leaked, increasing the risk of exposure to personal information,” the provider explains, adding that 238 million leaked passwords have also left 74% of breached UK users vulnerable to potential account takeover .

“We felt it was essential to draw attention to these alarming statistics. The dynamic atmosphere in London provided an ideal backdrop for sparking crucial conversations about privacy and challenging the status quo,” Survila told me.

The campaign received a lot of attention on the streets, with people shouting in amazement and taking photos.

This isn’t the first time Surfshark has taken to the streets with a provocative stunt to prick the public’s conscience on privacy-related issues. The team installed a 2.5 meter high pink pipe, releasing thick green slime, in front of the new German home of the ‘Big Five’ tech giants in Munich in October last year. “Your data is leaking. Protect your online data,” was the message.

“Despite minor differences, both campaigns share the core objective: to make the concept of privacy, or the lack thereof, more tangible,” Survila told me.

While the team does not plan to repeat the transparent toilet campaign in other cities, Survila reiterates Surfshark’s beliefs in leveraging shock value to effectively communicate important ideas.

She said: “We’re planning a few more privacy-focused campaigns in London and New York, so stay tuned for updates!”