00:00 I'm Seth For Privacy, and welcome to Season 2, Episode 7 of Opt Out. Opt Out's a show where I sit down with passionate people to learn why privacy matters to them, the tools and techniques they've found and leveraged, and where we encourage and inspire others towards personal privacy and data sovereignty. Have you heard about application firewalls and tools like Little Snitch on Mac, but not really sure where to start on Mac or on other platforms?

This episode, we're going to sit down with David and Daniel from Safing to chat about their project, Portmaster. Welcome on to Opt Out, David and Daniel. Thank you. Good to be there. Yeah, thanks for having us. Sounds great. Yeah, I'm very excited to chat about Portmaster and kind of what you all are more broadly also doing at Safing. I think there's a lot of recognition in more of the hardcore privacy community around tools like Little Snitch and just the power that can come through an application firewall.

But I think it'll be good to hear about, obviously, your solid open source cross-platform tool, Portmaster, and just kind of hear how people can use that as a tool for both privacy and security. But for those who aren't familiar with you guys, or with Portmaster, do you mind introducing yourselves? Definitely. So we're two founders of three from Safing.io, and we are building the Portmaster, which is in the end, we actually develop two products. So one product protects data from flowing out of your computer via the application firewall.

That's the Portmaster. And then we also have a product which protects the data that is allowed to go out. It protects that data in transit. And that is the SPN, Safing Privacy Network. So yeah, that's in a nutshell what we do. Awesome. And how about you, Daniel? So I kind of kickstarted this some time ago, and then brought Raphael, who's the one that's not here today, our CEO, and David on board. And we've been, us three, since pretty much the beginning, and then kind of grew from there.

So I'm in charge. I'm the CTA. I'm in charge of all the technical stuff. Also the technical lead developer for our product. And then David is responsible for all the communication and also some programming. Awesome. Yeah, yeah, definitely excited to hear more about the tools that y'all are building. And I think, obviously, from what you're building out and making available to people, it's clear that you care about personal privacy. So I'd love if each of you can just kind of walk me through what it was that woke you up to the need for personal privacy and made that such an important thing in your lives.

Yeah, sure. So for me, I think some point around 2010-ish, I started to look at where my data is and how it's kind of protected. And I kind of started moving away from the big providers because I had a Google account with lots of stuff in there at that time. And I kind of was uncomfortable with that because even then there were like rumors about kind of who was reading your emails and what they were doing with the data and stuff like that. But there's much more rumors than actual facts that we have today.

So I kind of ventured into the full self-hosting thing, which means like buying a domain, renting a server, kind of really as a noob getting into this stuff and trying to regain control, which like was really painful also because everything's just so complicated and like really steep learning curve. But kind of that was my beginning. And from there, I kind of then started to develop a threat model and then kind of moved a little bit back from the self-hosting thing to kind of a hybrid approach, I would say.

Yeah, especially a decade ago, the tools for self-hosting were not nearly as fleshed out. The documentation, the community around that was a lot smaller. It was a very different time trying to do that much. Yeah. Like trying to go full in on self-hosting that long ago. I think it is definitely a lot easier now, but still not necessarily a simple thing, but definitely easier than it used to be. But how about you, David? What was it that woke you up to me for personal privacy?

Yeah, it was basically like around the time of the Snowden revelations. Daniel and I knew each other back then. And actually, it was Daniel who like kind of talked about these issues more in depth with me. And it took a while until we then founded a company. And like in the meantime, I worked for a mobile app development company. And it was like the team was great and it was super fun developing code for such a successful company. Like millions of users use that.

But at the same time, I saw like how data is collected and how it is also like shared with other companies. And it's like, OK, yeah, this month we are just switching to another provider because they provide an extra service. And it's just updating the terms of service, Bing, Bash, Bong. And yeah, like all of the data we collected back then was then shared with Google or another company. Like there were plenty. So that was one aspect. But I also was kind of like into the whole entrepreneurial part and stuff.

And I was longing for something more and stuff. So I just quit. And later on, like, oh, I didn't just quit. We first got a fund, a grant for a safe thing, like where we done like work part time. And then, yeah, we quit. And then it just ventured out into this thing. So, but yeah, I come from there. That's awesome, man. Thanks for for walking us through that. And I think it's been really interesting, especially in this season, to kind of learn more and more about the kind of the entrepreneurial mindset of a lot of people that are approaching the space and seeing how you can build a business that's ethical and cares about privacy and cares about user data while also providing solid open source tools.

I love that that's, I think, becoming more acceptable and more well understood and hearing from people like y'all that really took that jump and are helping to provide a quality service and provide a quality tool while also figuring out how to make a business out of it. Yeah, it's definitely an important topic. And I really enjoyed the episodes so far. Thanks. Yeah, yeah. It's one that I'm trying to learn more about. I mean, we've talked a lot about kind of funding models in the free and open source space and business models and all of that.

So something that I'm trying to learn more about and just better understand how different people are approaching it. So I definitely do want to hear more about the kind of the business model and funding behind Saving later on. But I want to kind of start back at the beginning and hear a little bit more about what was it that prompted y'all to create Portmaster? And maybe even further than that, what prompted you to create Saving as an organization?

It kind of started with a steer already, say, with the kind of snow revelations. I was literally studying IT security back then in 2013 when that hit us. And it got me thinking. And I was thinking about, well, I'm learning all this amazing stuff about security on the internet right now. So I have all the tools. I know everything I need to know to protect myself completely. But, like, thinking through it, it was just so complex and so much work. And I was kind of a little baffled at, like, how complex protection is and how lost normal people are.

So that was where I kind of set out to change that. Because I thought privacy shouldn't only be for nerds. Privacy should be for everyone. And that's the main vision that drove all this and, like, led to some prototypes and then led to the first application for funding and then the founding of Saving. And what was it that made y'all want to start out with building Portmaster specifically? Like, what was it about an application firewall and kind of the need for that that made that jump out as the first thing you wanted to build out?

- It was, this is like kind of a fun journey, like Daniel

10:00 is the mastermind behind all of this. So he, as he mentioned, he had like prototypes and concepts way back, but it was always like the vision of having both products in one. So, and it was a bit of a back and forth between us founders, like our discussions, like with which products should we start? And in the end, it just made sense to focus more on the port master at first because the SPN relies on the port master. A lot of the functionality it needs to, as well as from a like marketing perspective, it also like it's better entry for people to start out with a free product.

And so, yeah, it were a few factors, but that's kind of, maybe you want to add something? Yeah, I would kind of take this even one step back where one of the prototypes I was building was a DNS based filtering service, which actually was live. It was running. I had own crawlers to search for bad stuff and tag that and build a database of stuff. And I started having first users on there. And what I realized at some point that, well, of course, this was technically a really nice solution because it is instantly compatible with kind of every device.

But I realized that on one side, it doesn't give you full control. So there's a whole side of things that kind of gets left out where you don't see things and can block things. And on the other side, it's also difficult to install. And there's no nice way for user feedback and stuff like that. So, and that was the point where it was like, okay, I really don't want to, because, but I have to get software on the devices because that's the only way to get full control and to have an actual great user experience.

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely understandable. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about just kind of what are the things that you hope users can get from using Portmaster. And maybe before even diving into that, like what are the advantages of using an application firewall on your desktop, on your laptop, that kind of thing? Well, there are like the key thing I would say is insights into what is happening in your network. So the ability to monitor what is going on and like with the rise of surveillance capitalism, this is an ever growing problem and issue and people like don't really grasp that what is going on.

So the first thing is definitely like seeing what is going on, but then also having like easy tools to react accordingly. So easy privacy in a nutshell, but focusing on the, like we had, I wanted to quote a user feedback and I quote, I love checking where data is being delivered to and what is happening on my device. It's super cool to block those domains which are tracking me. It's fun to be honest. And that was such a heartwarming comment where it's like, yeah, we want that experience to, that users can have that experience.

Yeah. Yeah. And such a key piece of that is just, like you said, getting that visibility because a big part of why surveillance capitalism works is that these companies are not transparent about the tracking they're doing. They, they may be having you sign a broad legalese terms of terms and conditions and that kind of thing when you sign up for the service, but it is very much an intentional thing that they kind of hide and disguise the ways that they track and surveil users because they don't want them to know because they know that if people know all of the data points they're collecting, all of the domains that their service or their app is reaching out to.

And when they see that and they see the scope of what these tools are doing to their data and where their data is being shared, even just directly from their device, it's a, it's very much an eye-opening experience. So even just gaining visibility into that is, is so important, but then just being able to quickly block those things that you, you don't want to keep happening and not relying on the application to expose something for you. You don't have to wait for that specific browser, that specific app to give you control over telemetry or whatever it is, but you can block that at the application firewall level once you have that visibility and can better understand what's going on on your device.

Yeah, definitely. Anything you want to add there, Daniel? I think David got that really well. Perfect. Yeah, I think it's a, it's a fairly straightforward concept, but one that I don't think a lot of people have experience with actually using day-to-day. So definitely a key tool that can fit into a toolkit there. But what are the, what are some of the limitations that users should be aware of? Obviously they can, they can use Portmaster to get a better understanding of what network activity and what tracking is going on on their device.

And then they can obviously quickly block and change settings around that. But what are some limitations of Portmaster that users who want to start using it should be aware of? Yeah, just a quick note on like a cool feature of the Portmaster, which I really like, is that it's a very basic install. So it's just an easy setup and it has filter lists integrated. So a lot of the nasty shit it's already blocked. So yeah, and with the limitations, I think one of the first points is it's still early software.

So it has rough edges. It is still complicated or depending on your skill level. And we know that and we are trying to make things easier and more intuitive and more, yeah, like decreasing the learning curve for newcomers as well. So that's one point I would mention. Yeah, another thing that I think is really good to mention is that we don't see the Portmaster as a security tool. I know, Seth, you in the beginning, you kind of mentioned privacy and security, but we draw a line somewhere in the Portmaster.

We do a lot of security stuff. That's true because security enables privacy, but we're not an antivirus. So yeah, the Portmaster does not replace your antivirus. And we still encourage people to keep that stuff, whatever they've chosen for it. So there's some things we do, but we won't do the malware detection stuff. We focus on privacy blocking stuff that does not actively evade. So of course, in the kind of scope that we can, we will do everything to protect user privacy.

But there will be things that are just so advanced that it doesn't make sense for us to kind of build a whole new product just to kill that one thing if it's kind of malicious. So that's a thing that we expect antivirus software to take care of. Yeah, thanks for calling that out. It's definitely, definitely something important that people need to be aware of. And I mean, the normal caveat too, if your device is, is infected with malware that can control other things, there's a chance that can change how Portmaster can actually function on your device.

So it's, yeah, it's a good call out that it's not, it's not antivirus software, but focused on really network level privacy and helping to restrict some of that tracking. So thanks for clarifying that. Yeah, exactly. It is, it is a weird though to build software that restricts soft, other software on the same device. So there is kind of a very interesting threat level or threat model that the Portmaster has because it does need some protection against other software on the same device.

And we have that. So all the communication between the backend service and the user interface is every, all that is taken care of, that's secure. So no other process can just link itself into the Portmaster and set its own settings, stuff like that. So that won't work. Definitely makes sense there. Let's take a quick break from this episode to chat about the sponsors of OptOut, Cake Wallet, and LocalMonero. Cake Wallet is a key tool that I use daily as it allows me to easily and quickly use Monero for private by default payments.

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Thank you to both sponsors for their incredible support and partnership. And I hope you'll take a moment after the episode to learn more in the show notes or at optoutpod.com slash sponsors. And I think another area around potential limitations, but just kind of a question that I had was, is Portmaster something that's compatible with using like an always-on VPN and maybe also using a custom DNS provider, like for using DNS over HTTPS or that kind of thing, like NextDNS.

I'm just curious how it fits into using tools like that, if it maybe replaces something like a custom DNS provider or if it's something that can just work right alongside those types of tools. Yeah, I think Dan should take this one. Okay. So I'm going to take one step back here and say that the Portmaster is built in a way that it has a very deep integration into the system so that everything just works out of the box and you don't have to configure anything or so.

But also we don't change anything on the system. So if you uninstall the Portmaster, it is completely gone. There's no traces we leave. There's nothing that kind of we mess up and then kind of kill your device, stuff like that. And we do try to be compatible with everything. And that should work. But we know of a couple of cases where that doesn't work, especially with other software that tries to do the same thing as we do. So, for example, if we see the DNS request going to somewhere where it shouldn't be going, we just take care of that and redirect that request to the Portmaster itself so the user doesn't have to start reconfiguring the software.

But if another program comes along and does the same thing, then that won't work anymore. So there are cases where there is interference, both on DNS level and VPN level. From, I don't know if the last, latest report in mind, it's all in docs. So we have a separate page in the docs for software and for VPNs where we have everything with either works good or doesn't work or there are issues. So you can just look everything up and check before you install.

But I think the most stuff actually works quite well with the Portmaster. And in some cases, we do replace stuff, for example, with Next DNS. Instead of using the Next DNS software, you can just configure Next DNS within the Portmaster because the Portmaster does DNS over TLS. So we can just replace the Next DNS client. Perfect. Yeah, that makes sense to handle it that way for sure. I'm glad that that's generally, there's generally compatibility there between those types of tools.

And I'm sure as people start to use Portmaster more and more across a wide swath of other tools, people use different VPN providers and DNS, I'm sure you all get more reports. So hopefully people who do run into issues will take the time to file a report and make sure that you all are aware of any issues and walk through those with you all. But good to hear that it's generally compatible with those tools. Yeah, we're thankful for all these reports.

It helps a lot. Yeah, it's definitely that type of thing is something I think users really underrate their ability to help tools like these, to help projects like these, just by giving good solid feedback, being willing to give detail and being communicative when they run into issues. It's very helpful for software developers to have good solid feedback. So definitely something people can contribute. Yeah, also like it's very helpful for us if people run into an issue and they find an open report that they chip in on that and they're like, okay, I have a problem too because it's difficult for us to kind of prioritize what to handle first.

And the more we know something's a problem, we can prioritize that. Also, it shows us it's not that one guy running Linux with his weird setup that runs into problems, but it's actually more widespread. So that's not easy to kind of estimate. So even chipping in on a problem is very helpful for us. Yeah, absolutely. Something that people should do more and more of. So I'm hopeful that listeners will do that, both with tools like Portmaster and other tools that you're using if you're running into those issues.

Be sure to do whatever you can to help the developers understand that you're running into that issue and get any data or details that they need. We talked a little bit about kind of what an application-level firewall like Portmaster can do for you, but are there any kind of specific use cases that you're targeting for Portmaster? Is it really just anyone who has a computer and uses it and wants a little bit better privacy, they can pick up Portmaster and start using it?

Well, the long-term vision is to enable my mom and your mom to take back her privacy and for it to be simple enough to just install and then let it do its job. And naturally, for those who want to tweak things, they can do so. But it's basically that is like the vision for everybody to be able to take back their privacy. And yeah, there are some specific use cases where it gives you such peace of mind to be able to say, hey, this application, I just don't want it to touch the internet ever.

Like, let's say I use Microsoft Word to make a daily diary, then I might not want it to ever touch the cloud. So I just say, Word, you're not touching the internet. And that's set in stone. Yeah, I have the most experience using application firewalls on Android. And it is just such a powerful feature to be able to even use like an application or service that you don't trust and you don't want any of the communication happening to still be able to use it and just flip a switch and it not have internet access.

Yeah, peace of mind. Yeah, exactly. It really is. It's freeing and it can even open up the ability to use tools that you normally wouldn't because you finally have control over their network communication. It can be a really powerful thing. Awesome. Yeah, I'm hopeful that that will continue to get to that place where it's something that anyone can install and use. And that's really where those sane privacy defaults become so important because if you can bake in the general set of settings that people need up front, then they can do less and less tweaking and still be gaining a lot of that benefit.

But for those people who do want to do more kind of digging and change some things, what are some settings or features that they should take a look at or get familiar with when they start to use Portmaster? Yeah, I think the easiest thing is to open up the Portmaster and explore. There are these tip-ups, as we call them, like these little helpful tips where you can... We know some areas are still complicated. And I have the philosophy, if something needs a manual, it's too complicated.

So part of me wants to get rid of these tips, but they are here because it still is too complicated. Or some areas. Or it might just be hard to learn certain things. So just explore, open the tips. If things are complicated, give us feedback. And generally, we also aim to write great docs. Like we have a settings handbook where every setting is explained in depth. And we have a lot of improvements coming up as well. Like these toggles, which you mentioned, the Portmaster will have them too.

So you can just flip a switch for an application, and then it blocks the internet. And yeah, it's still in alpha. That's kind of coming back to that. We know we have a way ahead of us, but it's... Yeah, for now, but also in the future, it's probably just best to open up the Portmaster and explore. One thing to add here is that, because David mentioned complexity, is because we target both like kind of people that aren't into tech so much, and also the experts, we have this concept of like different UI modes.

So you can sort

30:00 switch between the level of complexity that you see. So you can have kind of view of a simple interface that doesn't confuse you if you don't want to, or you can even go up and enable the developer view where you'll see all the details that you ever wanted and you get all the controls. So that lets everyone kind of pick kind of the UI they're comfortable with. So we can kind of touch both of these user bases here. I love that there's both UI's approach there because I think that can be such a valuable thing because there's, I don't know, there's always that wide swath of people who are using a tool like Portmaster.

So really having the opportunity for someone to opt in to seeing the more advanced controls and more advanced logs and more advanced features is super useful. And that's something that I always enjoy when it's available in a tool. I understand you want to offer very sane, simple defaults to people in case it is someone who's very much not an advanced user. But having that more functional UI, that more advanced UI is a super, super useful thing. So I'll definitely have to check that out.

Yeah. Also, because you mentioned about sane defaults a couple of times now, that's something like we, at some point had a third product plan that was all about giving the community an option to vote on defaults for applications. We still very much like to do that in the future, but I was just too much. And so we had to ditch that, sadly. But it will come back someday and the community will be able to kind of collectively decide on default settings for applications.

That's a really fascinating concept. I don't think I've ever seen anyone do that. Normally just the devs kind of choose the same defaults, but crowdsourcing that info would be a super, super interesting idea. I'll have to keep an eye out for that because I think that would be really cool to see. We kind of have that with the filter lists. Of course, it's not like per app, rules with domains per app. But yeah, it's kind of, you get a little bit of insight where the ideas come from and where we have to like ditch the feature creep because we can't do everything at once.

And I'm not saying it's not going to happen. I'm just saying it's, yeah. But Daniel knows that too. If it's going to happen, it's probably a few years ahead. Yeah, I'm the feature creeper in my story. It's a good title. I mean, it's a good problem to have because it shows that you're passionate about this and that you want to see these things continue to improve and grow. I think it's a good sign that there are constantly new things that you want to add that you kind of have to self-restrain and prevent that scope creep.

But a good problem to have for sure. It's a fun problem. And we have an amazing team and an amazing designer whose job it is to like communicate via design what the Prodmaster, like all of the Prodmaster's features. And it is challenging at times. And sometimes we have to like take a few steps back or like ditch a thing or hide a thing for now and all that stuff. But it's fine. It's fun. It's about like finding the balance. Yeah, definitely. Definitely understand that.

It's a tricky line to draw, but an important one when building software. So another thing I want to chat about is just kind of taking a look at what other alternatives there are to Prodmaster out there. I mean, I know like little snitch on Mac is I think the most well-known application firewall, at least in the circles I run in. But I'd love to hear a little bit more about any other alternatives that are out there and then maybe what makes Prodmaster better or why Prodmaster kind of is being built around that.

Yeah, there are plenty of application firewalls out there, which is a good thing. There is like you mentioned little snitch on macOS, which is closed source. There is an open source app called Lulu, which is created by Patrick Wardle, great guy. And then there is Simplewall on Windows, which is open source as well. There is GlassWire, which is pretty big, which is proprietary. So you have to, yeah, both for little snitch and for GlassWire, you have to pay as well.

Yeah, and I think on Linux, there's open snitch and might be a few others as well. But yeah, it's difficult to say, like, or it's easier to talk about, like, the strengths for the Prodmaster when you mentioned, like, them individually. But in general, it's like Prodmasters open source. It's one thing a lot of, I think no other application firewall I know has this built in where, like, the basic protections are already set up with the filter lists.

We try to be easy to use, or we believe we are easy to use. And so, but people can judge themselves. And then there's also, like, a technical advantage where I think Daniel can better chime in here. So kind of our goal is to give users full control. So that meant that we opted for the lowest level integration possible, which means on Windows, we actually developed our own kernel extension to be, like, where the actual fun is. And on Linux, we integrate with the IP tables firewall.

So we're kind of as low as it gets, which, like, others have too, of course. But some of them don't. So some of them might not even see all requests or can only view them and not block them. So we have some technical advantages here. Also, we kind of want to create a baseline. So that's why we have the secure DNS resolver bundled in there, too. So the Portmaster has DNS over TLS for you. Protect your traffic there. Also validates the DNS responses, if they actually make sense.

Blocks the ones you don't want. It has basic protection for DNS data tunnel detection. So all kind of small but kind of important pieces that kind of cover your bases in terms of privacy, but also some aspects of security. So we kind of aim to be something you install for baseline security that takes care of all the normal stuff, takes care of your privacy. And then if you have special needs and you can install your special tools, then the Portmaster is kind of your first thing you build upon.

Yeah. And just want to underline, like, all the integration is open source as well. So that comes in natural for us, but just wanted to underline that again. Yeah, that's a huge piece of it, is not only being cross-platform, but being open source and having that commitment to open sourcing all of the work that y'all are doing, I think is a huge piece of that. And especially for a tool that gets this kind of low-level integration that you're exposing all of your network traffic to the application-level firewall that you use.

So having something be proprietary in that situation can be a very trusting and really dangerous thing to do, in my opinion. But it being an open source tool obviously allows people to inspect the code and get a better understanding of what's happening there. And hopefully as Portmaster's usage grows and as the project grows, there'll be more and more eyes on the code from the open source community as people adopt it there. But just simply being open source and being cross-platform, I think are immensely powerful features that a lot of people don't think about, but are very, very important, especially for those people who happen to use multiple operating systems, like maybe they use Windows for work and Linux for personal or something like that, not having to have a unique application firewall for each and understand the differences and all of that is a powerful tool as well.

So the cross-platform nature is an important piece for me, at least. Yeah. And I don't think we mentioned it yet, so I'm sorry to the listeners who got their hopes up, but we do not support Mac yet. So just wanted to drop that. So that's clear. Yeah, good to clarify. And that is something y'all are planning on, correct? Yeah. Again, it's a matter of what to prioritize. And there are a lot of things, like this is, of course, a bigger undertaking, but yeah, it's very hard to predict the future.

That's what we learned on our journey as well. And that's why we just got rid of communicating timelines externally. So we still have our schedule and stuff, but we only communicate what we're working on now and it's...

40:00 Like, I know that is not going to happen the next three months, but beyond that, it's like, we don't know. Yeah, that's good clarification. Also, if you're talking about Mac support, I'm also throwing that we're looking at mobile support. So no promises there, but we're looking into it and see what we can do there. It would be great to have some more options on Android specifically for application firewalls. So definitely we'll keep it out for that.

I'd love to be able to use something like Portmaster. Obviously, I use the firewall built in the CalyxOS, which I think their name for it is Datura or something like that. But I enjoy that. But more alternatives that are actually open source and cross-platformer are always a win. And one more question I had kind of around the technical approach to the tool. I like to learn like what logging is done and what logs are capped by the service that people are using.

Obviously, Portmaster is something that runs local. So there's no logs that are being sent to you all from that. But with the native DNS integration, is that something that uses your own DNS server? Or is that something that uses kind of a common DNS server on the internet? What's the approach around DNS that's done there? So before I kind of dive into the technical details, I want to point out that we try to write a really clear privacy policy. So if you have any questions that we don't cover right now, please go with that.

We try to make it really accessible and easy-readable and kind of explain everything there too. So, but technically, DNS, we use existing providers. So you can choose whichever you like. We have a couple defaults that you can switch really quick with the click of a button. And then we have a page on our docs that goes into details with loads of other providers and shows you how to configure them for you, or even like configure your own next DNS setup.

So naturally, this means that whatever provider is selected there will, of course, see your queries and will log according to their policy. But I think that all the default providers that we offer don't log or only log for a very short amount of time. The portmaster itself does not do any logging, depending on your selected log level. There will be some stuff in the local log files, which are automatically deleted after, I think, a month. But that's something that, yeah, you can just delete whatever you like to.

And it's only local, of course. And then there's some communication, of course, with our servers for the automatic updates, or if you're submitting GitHub report from within the app, or stuff like that, or like giving you updates on network status, things like that. So we have a couple endpoints there, but also you can look up in the privacy policy. Awesome. Thanks for breaking that down. I assumed they were all local, but I think important for people to understand the approach that's being taken there, and especially to understand the DNS provider that they're using.

I'm glad there's native integration with NextDNS, because that's actually who I use right now until I start self-hosting that. But it's been a really useful tool for me. So I'm glad y'all provide some good defaults there, and easy ability for users to change to a different DNS provider if necessary. Yeah. Well, just a couple more questions for y'all. We talked a little bit earlier about kind of the difficulty of building a business model around free and open source software.

And obviously, Portmaster, the first product they all released, is something that's free and open source, both as in Libre and as in free of cost. There's no cost to actually download and use Portmaster. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about how SafeAment.io is funded or made sustainable, and maybe what some of your plans for that are now or in the future. Yeah, this is like a topic near and dear to my heart. I think looking back, I can quickly talk about how we founded ourselves so far.

So we kept 100% ownership since with investors, things can become complicated or often tend to become complicated or you lose a lot of control. Like often, let's say often you lose control. So we went a different route. We funded parts ourselves, but also applied for tons of grants. And we received plenty of grants. And we are super thankful for that, which implies we have to write applications, write reports. It's institutions from the Austrian government which want to strengthen early business and early research.

And there's a lot of details. We write all of that on our homepage. So you can just have a look where our money came or is coming from. And that's what, yeah. And now slowly but surely, we are transitioning into a user-supported business. So we have the freemium approach. Like the Portmaster is our free and low software with all of the local features. And then, like, I already touched upon this in the beginning. But the second product is the Safe and Privacy Network, which protects your data in transit.

So it's kind of like everything we reimagined with firewalls. We remixed the VPN and TorSpace. And we're super pumped about it. It's also an alpha. But that's, like, where we charge naturally because we have bandwidth costs. So we just charge for that. And that funds both services, both products. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely am curious to learn more about the SPN. I know that hasn't been our focus here today. But if you all want to go into a little bit more detail on kind of what the Safe and Privacy Network is, and maybe just briefly how it would compare to something like a VPN, I think that would be useful to give people an intro.

And then maybe we can dive into that further on a future episode. Yeah, sure. I'll give you a quick overview. So the idea with the SPN was to kind of look at the space, what's out there, and try to come up with something with, let's say, less weaknesses than existing solutions. So with VPNs, the biggest problem is all these no-lock policies that often turn out to be not true. And also VPNs are quite trackable if you have enough visibility into the network.

And you don't even have to be the NSA or whatnot to feed that traffic. You can just buy that traffic. It's called NetFlow data. You just go to providers and buy that stuff, and you're in. So we kind of can trace back VPN users to their original IP address quite easily. And the other side was where, like, we have Tor, very good software established, very effective. But the thing with Tor is that kind of it's, I feel it's still for nerds, not in the aspect of usability, but in the aspect of the threat modeling, because you have to know how Tor works in order to know what it does and what it doesn't.

And so the approach we're making different than Tor is kind of to provide, say, fallbacks for the cases where Tor wouldn't provide you with the adequate protection. One example is the unencrypted connections. These are thankfully getting less and less on the internet, but they're still there.

50:00 And with Tor, you have exit nodes that kind of combine with traffic. And in ESPN, we have special trusted nodes provided by us, kind of like a VPN provider, where we make sure that nothing happens to your traffic. So it's kind of like really a hybrid, trying to combine the best of both worlds. And that's something we're launching right now. And we're very excited to see grow. Yeah, and then can people learn more about the ESPN just on your normal website, saving.io?

Yeah. And you can also try it out by pre-ordering, pre-ordering, but kind of ordering right now. And you get, I think, the last free week of January to test it. It's like the pre-order is ingrained in our brains because that was the word we had used for two years. But it's live now, so you can subscribe, you can pay, and then test it. Awesome. Well, thanks for walking us through that. And definitely will be curious to try that out myself and maybe circle back to the ESPN later on in Season 2 and chat more about that specifically to get familiar with it, especially as you all continue to work on and improve that.

But it seems like an interesting approach for sure. Well, last question I have for you all, David and Daniel, is just how can listeners jump in and help to support what you're doing at Safeng and what you're doing with Portmaster specifically? Yeah, I mean, the best thing you can do is to use the Portmaster and see if it gives you value. We are super encouraged by the reports we get and the downloads we get. And then, of course, if you enjoy that, you can spread the word.

In the beginning of the year, we got mentioned on Hacker News. Awesome. And the biggest result we saw there was a 50% increase in GitHub stores. That was just one person sharing one link, and that's super and amazing. And naturally, yeah, like as we mentioned before, we're parting in with issues with compatibility stuff. And yeah, and also you can subscribe to the SPN and support us financially. But we are grateful for, yeah, like everything. It's super amazing to see this grow and exciting.

Well, thank you all so much for being willing to jump on on a Sunday and just chat about Portmaster and what you're doing. And just thank you for the effort that you made so far and for prioritizing free and open source as a part of the products that you're building. I think that's a hugely important piece of things, and I'm glad to see that so far. But also fascinating to see that you all have developed a business model around that and that you're really finding that niche of free and open source, but also a sustainable business.

It's a very important thing that we need in that space. So glad to see that happening with Safing and with Portmaster right now and with SPN later on. But thank you both for coming on today. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. And thank you also for your work. It's one piece as well, like spreading or educating and all this. It's encouraging seeing everybody putting their strengths to the cause. Yeah, very grateful to have the platform and be able to really just share as I'm learning myself and learning about tools like Portmaster and getting to chat with you all about that.

It's great that I'm able to share that with a broad audience and just get some more people familiar with tools and just see what's out there. Obviously, no one has to use Portmaster, but I think it can be a really valuable tool. So glad to be able to just inform people and let them make well-informed decisions on the tools that they decide to integrate into their privacy toolkit, depending on their threat model. Yeah, thanks for that. It's really great work to spread the word about privacy and why we need it and how we can protect it.

That's something that we want to invest in the future too more. And so thanks for your great work and kind of getting the mission done in educating people. That's so important. And thanks for having us. Thanks, yeah. Yeah, thank you all for the kind words. Y'all have a great rest of your weekend. You too. Thanks. Thanks for listening. And I hope you enjoyed this episode of Opt Out. If you did, please take a moment and subscribe to the podcast. Or if you're already subscribed, share it with one friend or family member this week.

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