Manage Internet uploads with Portmaster

Intensified data grabbing is making life difficult for users on the Internet. It's not just the usual suspects like Google or Facebook who are collecting user data. Even conventional software packages have increasingly started phoning home and sending "telemetry data" to their vendors or third parties.

Users typically don't notice this data transfer and cannot track what data is being sent to whom. To stop this bad habit, a startup by the name of Safing, which has already twice received funding from the Austrian innovation incubator Netidee, has developed an application firewall called Portmaster that lets everyday users track and control the flow of data to hidden recipients [1].

Idea

Portmaster combines several privacy-related services in a single package. Included within the Portmaster application is a firewall, a system of filter lists to identify trackers and other undesirable sites, a secure DNS service, and an optional privacy service (similar to the TOR network) called the Safing Privacy Network (SPN).

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