This post is part of a series outlining the many reasons why I started Bubble. Previous installments: Part 1 (VPN Vendors Are Shady). Part 2 (Personal Data Security). Part 3 (Facebook FOMO).

I wanted to enjoy online discussions again

I’m on social media and I’m a regular reader of several news blogs. I often read the comments, and occasionally participate in the conversation.

Sometimes messages are needlessly inflammatory, offensive, polemical, or otherwise not useful to me. I find these posts distracting, annoying, and ultimately “noise” that my brain has to filter out.

It’s unfortunate, because on most sites there are genuinely thoughtful comments that I want to read, but they’re mixed in with so much trash that my reading experience becomes unbearable (Reason.com, I’m looking at you). So I end up either missing out on posts I’d enjoy reading by skipping the comments entirely, or wasting mental energy filtering out the crap that scrolls by, trying not to miss the good stuff.

Many of these sites do not have any “block user” feature at all. Even when they do, it’s often possible for the person you’ve blocked to know they’ve been blocked, when you’d prefer to have more discretion.

I wanted a one-click block user function. Whether the site has that feature or not. Click the block button and posts from that user disappear; never see posts from that user again. The blocked user would have no way to know they’d been blocked, and the site would have no way to know who you were blocking.

In part 3 of this series, I explained how ShadowBan makes this possible on Facebook. Even better, it allows keyword-based blocks and much more. So I extended ShadowBan to support other social media and news/discussion websites.

Today, ShadowBan works on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit, and a handful of blogs with discussion forums: HackerNews, MarginalRevolution, and Reason. It’s fairly easy to write plugins for new sites, so we plan to continue expanding ShadowBan over time to cover more of the sites that our users enjoy.

Are you ready to throw the trash to the curb? Want to enjoy more signal and less noise? Try Bubble!

This post is part of a series outlining the many reasons why I started Bubble. Previous installments: Part 1 (VPN Vendors Are Shady). Part 2 (Personal Data Security).

I wanted to get back on Facebook (don’t hate me)

I had been off of Facebook for many years. The constant stream of privacy violations and Facebook’s inadvertent positioning as a surveillance company really put me off. Coming to the realization that Facebook’s actual customers are advertisers and its users are the product really crystallized my decision to leave. I kept my account open, just never used it again.

Then something happened in 2018. After living in the San Francisco Bay Area for the better part of two decades, I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. So I have many friends who live a couple thousand miles away. I try to keep in touch – I talk by phone (so old-school, I know!) with many of them every so often.

One day I was talking with one of my friends who was expecting a baby. I asked him how he and his wife were doing, and when the baby was due. He said, “We had the baby! You didn’t see? We put the pictures on Facebook.” It was a face-palm moment for me. I couldn’t be upset that he didn’t call me personally – we’re close but we’re not family, and Facebook (even with all its flaws) is a very efficient way to communicate this kind of news to everyone you know. Except I wasn’t using Facebook, so I missed out.

I thought to myself: what would it take for me to use Facebook again? I’d need assurances that Facebook couldn’t track every little thing I did on Facebook. I’d need assurances that my off-Facebook activity couldn’t be tracked by Facebook, regardless of my “privacy settings”. And then there was the signal-to-noise problem. I’d want to have some ability to filter my feed myself, independent of any tools provided by Facebook (my filtering preferences just represent more personal information for them to sell).

So I created Bubble, which includes the BlockParty and ShadowBan apps, to accomplish this.

With BlockParty, all network requests to Facebook are blocked, unless you’re on the Facebook website. This includes the millions of “Like” buttons and other hidden Facebook trackers that litter the internet, are embedded in mobile apps, and so on. Even when you’re on the Facebook site, ads and behavior trackers (sent every few seconds!) are blocked. All off-site links are scrubbed of tracking information, so you can safely click on shared articles without being redirected through data brokers.

With ShadowBan, I can block individual users, or block posts by keyword, and more. ShadowBan filters the posts out for me, so Facebook never knows what I am blocking. ShadowBan also displays a “signal/noise” number to help me understand just how much of my feed is useful. It regularly hovers around 50%. This means half my feed is ads and stuff I’d rather not see. I smile every time I think about the time and stress I have saved myself by avoiding crap that I don’t want to see.

It’s not perfect. Facebook still knows about every Like and Comment that I make. They know about every link I click on Facebook that stays on Facebook – viewing friend’s pages, community pages, events and the like. But it’s such a major improvement that I now feel comfortable coming back.

And so I’m back on Facebook! My feed is clean and my personal information is (largely) protected. And I’m already reaping the benefits — just last week I found out an old high school friend had also moved to the Charlotte area, and he lives just a few miles away from me! We’re going to grab lunch and catch up after so many years apart. Thanks Facebook!

Are you ready to get back on Facebook and feel safe about it? Try Bubble!

UPDATE: since I wrote this post, my friend and I had lunch, it was great to see him and catch up! So nice to find a new old friend living nearby!

a happy reunion

This post is part of a series outlining the many reasons why I started Bubble. Read part 1 (VPN Vendors are Shady) here.

I wanted a VPN that could do more than relay encrypted packets — I wanted to actively block and modify my own traffic

I spent most of 2019 working at Netskope, a network security company. Netskope is an amazing company, with awesome people and leading-edge tech. Their customers are the biggest-of-the-big, Fortune 500 companies and their international peers. They use Netskope to enforce corporate data security across their network. Netskope is a new kind of security system that is “API aware”, meaning that Netskope doesn’t just look at URLs and decide “block or allow”, they actually understand what’s going on, like “This is a download from Google Drive”, or “This is a post to Twitter”, and so on.

This allows Netskope to enforce some very sophisticated, cloud-aware security policies on behalf of their customers. A crucial part of the “magic” that makes this possible is something called SSL Interception (SSLI), which allows Netskope to peek inside what would otherwise be encrypted connections and perform deep inspection on these streams and their payloads.

SSLI is not for the faint of heart: it’s tantamount to breaking end-to-end encryption and performing a “man in the middle attack” (MITM), a technique normally associated with criminals and national spy agencies. But in this case, the corporate customer is paying Netskope to perform automated MITM attacks towards the end goal of enforcing the company’s data security policy.

Light Bulb! I wondered what was possible with this technique, if used by regular people to enforce personal data security, instead of for megacorps to enforce corporate data security. You could block ads and trackers. You could enhance web sites with new features. You could spy on sneaky apps that try to transmit data behind your back, and see what they’re doing. And then block them. And so much more.

BUT, the only way a system like this could be trusted is if people were really and truly only spying on themselves. If this service were offered by a vendor, it would be crucially important that the vendor had no visibility into the traffic. Otherwise, you’d run into the same problems that plague all the other VPN companies today. This is one of the ways that Bubble is truly unique – we are the only VPN service that, by design, has no visibility into the traffic between your devices and your VPN.

Thinking into the future, such a platform could be extensible: each bundle of functionality (for Bubble, these are ShadowBan, BlockParty, Snitcher, etc.) could be packaged as a “VPN app”. Developers could create new VPN Apps that did new, cool things. People could choose which VPN apps they want to run. It would be an open ecosystem, creating value for regular people without spying on them – and instead allowing them to spy on (and block or change) their own traffic.

And so Bubble was born. Up until today, this kind of technology has only been available to large corporations with deep pockets. Such systems are typically very expensive and take months to set up. With Bubble, this level of power is now available to everyone. It’s affordable and you can be up and running in minutes.

Intrigued? Ready to try Bubble? Sign up today!

I’m going to assume you know a bit about what Bubble is all about and what makes Bubble different from everything else out there. If not, you’ll probably enjoy learning about it.

In this blog series, I’m going to talk about the reasons that I started Bubble. There are many reasons, so I’ll go through them one at a time, in no particular order. Without further adieu –

I wanted to run a VPN and I didn’t trust any of the vendors

I decided it was time for me to use a VPN. As someone who dearly values their online privacy, I had been using the internet “in the clear” for far too long.

Trust Issues

After doing some research, I discovered that the VPN industry has some serious trust issues. While promising increased privacy, many of them actively violate your privacy. Others just get hacked, being the large attractive targets to criminals that they are.

So I decided I would run my own VPN. This is no small task, and requires a fair bit of technical expertise. But I was up to the task. In evaluating technology choices, my goals were to find a solution that was 100% open source, easy to use, and supported all of my devices (iOS, Android, Mac OS X, and Windows).

Open Source VPN

My technology evaluation led me to WireGuard, hands-down the best open source VPN software available today. It is 100% open source and supports all my devices, but it’s not exactly easy to use. WireGuard has a lot of knobs and dials, and I wanted to make sure they were all tuned to optimum settings. Fortunately, there are a number of open source tools available to setup and configure WireGuard for you, ensuring that the security settings are all properly tightened down. I decided to use AlgoVPN, which is one of the most popular and well-supported ways to set up and manage a WireGuard VPN.

After a bit of work, it was all set up, and I was enjoying my new VPN. But some things were tediously technical. For example, adding and removing devices was a pain: I had to login to the server, edit a file, and manually run a reconfiguration script. I decided to automate the tedious stuff and created a simple web application to manage my VPN and devices. This system was essentially the first nascent “bubble” in existence.

Sharing is Caring

Having done all of this myself, I wanted to make it easy for non-technical people to replicate what I had done. It had to be super easy to use: no technical jargon, no command-line steps, all web-based with a clean and responsive UI. This user-friendly, user-focused approach has been Bubble’s vision from the very beginning.

More than a VPN

We have built Bubble into so much more than just a VPN. While we have made great strides with our solution, we have just scratched the surface of what is possible with this powerful platform. But don’t take my word for it – request an invite and experience Bubble for yourself!

So you’ve decided that your online privacy is important enough that you want to use a VPN.

Which VPN should you use? Here are a few important problems to think about, with serious implications to your privacy.

There are dozens of “VPN-as-a-Service” providers on the market today. Their advertising is everywhere. They sure seem easy to use. What problems do they have?

Criminal attraction

When you operate a global VPN infrastructure for thousands of customers, you become an attractive target for bad actors. In October 2019, a major VPN vendor announced that their security had been compromised. For over a year and a half (!!) hackers were hijacking connections from VPN customers, rendering customer traffic visible to the hackers, and customer privacy non-existent.

In the same way that a major ecommerce site is a more attractive target to criminals than a small-time webshop, criminals are attracted to shared VPNs like moths to a flame. If your vendor operates a shared global infrastructure, there is simply no avoiding this. The hackers will never stop, the rewards are too great.

Is your VPN selling your data?

Many VPN vendors make money by selling data about their customers. In this feverishly competitive industry, vendors look for every place they can generate incremental revenue. For many VPN companies, this means selling customer data. Although your network connections are encrypted, the name of every site you connect to is sent unencrypted, in plaintext — and is thus visible to your VPN vendor. Your VPN can sell data on what sites you visit, when and how often. And that’s just where it starts. They can also sell data on where you’re connecting from, how much data you send to/from various sites, and more. In a world where your browsing history alone is enough to identify you, this is scary stuff!

Do you trust the black box?

When you use a shared VPN, you have no idea what happens inside the VPN. Your devices send all their traffic there, and data comes back, but what happens in between? Were criminals lurking inside? Did your vendor capture some of your data to sell to someone else? You simply have no way of knowing.

The Bubble Difference

Bubble flips the traditional vendor/customer trust relationship on its head. Instead of mistrusting our customers, we trust our customers. For example, we trust them with direct access to the system that’s carrying their traffic. And instead of expecting our customers to trust us, we expect our customers to be skeptical of any privacy claims we make. We’ve built our company and technology to be open and transparent so that customers can verify our privacy claims themselves.

Ready to try Bubble? Sign up here!

x-ray image of the break

And yet, for a true samurai to hasten death or to court it, was alike cowardice. A typical fighter, when he lost battle after battle and was pursued from plain to hill and from bush to cavern, found himself hungry and alone in the dark hollow of a tree, his sword blunt with use, his bow broken and arrows exhausted—did not the noblest of the Romans fall upon his own sword in Phillippi under like circumstances?—deemed it cowardly to die, but with a fortitude approaching a Christian martyr’s, cheered himself with an impromptu verse:

“Come! evermore come,

Ye dread sorrows and pains!

And heap on my burden’d back;

That I not one test may lack

Of what strength in me remains!”

This, then, was the Bushido teaching—Bear and face all calamities and adversities with patience and a pure conscience; for as Mencius taught, “When Heaven is about to confer a great office on anyone, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with toil; it exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty; and it confounds his undertakings. In all these ways it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies.” True honor lies in fulfilling Heaven’s decree and no death incurred in so doing is ignominious, whereas death to avoid what Heaven has in store is cowardly indeed!

It is my great pleasure to introduce you to Bubble.

The Internet has become a chaotic place! Spam, scams, malware, behavioral tracking, data breaches, oh my! Many people feel powerless to protect themselves against these online threats and invasions of their personal privacy.

Bubble is here to help. Bubble provides a personal data security platform to keep you and your information safe when you go online. Your secure internet experience all starts with BubbleVPN, a dedicated virtual private network that is yours and yours alone. 

Instead of running on a VPN server with a bunch of other VPN users, your Bubble runs on its own dedicated system that only you can access. This gives you control of the traffic and information that flows through your Bubble. We pair your dedicated VPN with a powerful set of VPN-powered apps to unlock advanced control and personalization of your internet experience.  

With Bubble, you are in control! 

• Stay anonymous & secure online
• Block behavioral tracking and intrusive ads
• Stop malware, scams, and phishing attempts
• Stay protected across all your devices – including in native apps

I started Bubble because I was disappointed with the options for running a VPN today:

• Lack of privacy. There are tons of “VPN as a Service” offerings on the market, and invariably they all require you to route all your traffic through their global multi-tenant infrastructure. I don’t want my traffic commingled with anyone else’s. I don’t want my traffic running across a VPN that my vendor can see into, or someone else can hack into.
• Self-hosting is hard. You can run your own VPN, but this requires substantial technical expertise. I have that expertise and I wanted to create something that regular people could use too.
• Awful user experience. Whether you choose a VPN service or host your own, the user experience generally sucks. Some of the services suck less, but they all suck. They’re hard to setup, hard to use, and sometimes they break the Internet for you.

With these frustrations in mind, we created Bubble!

Bubble is Private

As private as a self-hosted VPN. Your Bubble is a dedicated system, yours and yours alone. Traffic between your devices and your Bubble is not visible to Bubble, Inc.

Bubble is Simple

Even easier to use than a hosted VPN. Just launch your Bubble and install the Bubble app on your devices; they’ll automatically connect to your Bubble. If you ever need to disconnect, it’s one button-touch away.

Bubble is Fun!

We’ve put time and effort into making the Bubble experience a truly joyful one. We hope you’ll find using Bubble a breath of fresh air!

It was not easy to create a “VPN as a Service” that doesn’t have any access to the VPNs it creates on behalf of its customers. But we did it!

We plan to launch Bubble publicly later this year. Our early-access program is helping us put the finishing touches on it.

If you would like to try out Bubble, please sign up here!

Of course, Bubble is Open Source Software. If you really want to (and have some technical skills), you can launch your own Bubble without us.

So far, I’ve explained why Bubble is a better VPN than anything else. Yet Bubble is much more than a VPN. Once you have a dedicated system with this level of privacy and power, why not see how far you can go? Bubble goes a lot farther, but more on that in my next post.

Further Reading

If your curiosity has been piqued, you might enjoy reading:

• Why Bubble? aka “The Bubble Manifesto”
• What is Bubble?

Recently there has been a lot of news about data privacy — and for good reason — companies have been careless with your information. Identity theft and online crime are on the rise. 

Whenever you go online there’s a lot of information that is being collected in the background and often without your knowledge or consent. Some apps and websites secretly track your location, access your contact list, and gather data about your online activities, and then share or sell your data to the highest bidder.

Once your information is out, there’s no getting it back. It can be traded between data brokers and may end up in the hands of a thief, scammer, or worse.

Until now, there’s been no good way to get a handle on this problem. 

VPNs can provide some privacy protection, but do nothing to stop advertising and behavioral tracking. Ad-blockers can stop some ads and tracking in your web browser, but they’ll do nothing to stop data violations by native apps and built-in device services.

That’s why I’m excited to introduce BubbleVPN, a new kind of virtual private network. When your devices are connected to your Bubble, you’ll enjoy an unparalleled degree of data protection. Bubble stops both inbound advertising and outbound behavioral tracking. Bubble blocks ads and tracking everywhere — including in native apps. Bubble steps in to stop malware and scams from getting your data.

Request a beta invite and experience a new level of online privacy and data security!