Anonyome Labs, a Utah-based startup that runs a cyberprivacy platform for consumers, announced today that it has closed a $20.4 million funding round.

The Series B round included participation by existing investors Greg Clark, chief executive of Symantec Corp., and Crosspoint Ventures founder John Mumford, as well as new investors Hanna Ventures and Ariba co-founder Ken Eldred. The round also included a major investment from Todd Davis, founder and former chief executive of identity theft protection service LifeLock, who will also be joining Anonyome’s board of directors.

Founded in 2014, Anonyome offers two mobile apps aimed at helping users keep their personal information secure and private. The first app, SudoApp, uses end-to-end encryption to allow users to securely make calls and send texts or emails to anyone, even if the recipient does not have the app installed. Anonyome’s second product is SudoPay, a digital payment service that lets users make purchases online without having to enter their personal information on each site.

According to the company, the new funding will allow it to expand its SudoApp and SudoPay products, and it also plans on developing new Sudo products in the future.

“Our vision is a world liberated from bleak forecasts about the lack of safety on the Internet, excessive tracking and monitoring of your online activities, and invasive and ineffectual government legislation,” said Steve Shillingford, founder and chief executive of Anonyome Lab. “With over 1.2 million Sudos in use today, our users are deciding with whom, what, where, and how they share their information for much greater digital safety.”

Davis said he believes Sudo will help create new industry sectors. “We will soon look back in disbelief on a time where we used to give up all of our personal information – and let others profit from it – just to get access to the applications, services and social networks we wanted to use,” he said. Davis added that tools like Sudo are “bad news for big data miners, hackers and privacy violators – and great news for everyone else.”

End-to-end encryption has been growing in popularity as more and more users become concerned about whether their personal information could be at risk. Anonyome is not the only company to use encryption for messaging. For example, both Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp also offer encryption options for messages.

Photo: Visual Content Data Security via photopin (license)