Glasscleaner Protected Privacy

Overview

GlassCleaner is a service that improves your Internet experience by adding Privacy, Protection, and Performance.

Privacy

The privacy of your Internet connection is enhanced by using a SSL-based VPN that prevents anyone from watching what you do on the Web.
  • It's become common practice for large ISPs to track what websites their customers visit to build a marketing profile, which they sell to advertisers. It would be like your phone company selling the list of phone numbers you've called.
  • Any public WiFi where you don't have to enter a network password is "cleartext", so someone on the same WiFi can potentially watch your Internet traffic, just like they could listen to a phone call you have in a public place.

Protection

GlassCleaner protects your computer or smartphone from two types of locations on the Internet by blocking the domain lookup.
  • Internet researchers track sources of bad behavior on the Web, including botnets, ransomware, DDoS, and malware. They make that information public, and we keep your browser away from those locations. Updated hourly.
  • Online advertising isn't just distracting - it's also a way that bad guys are spreading malware, sometimes even on major websites. We use public lists of advertisers to keep your Internet experience clean. Updated daily.

Performance

Privacy and Protection don't have to slow down your system: our cloud-based servers can actually speed up your web browsing.
  • Advertising can take a lot of bandwidth, especially with modern ads that play videos that you can't stop or skip. Even "flat" ads take several layers of server-side redirection, each of which takes time. Removing ads will make your web pages load faster, since there's less to load.
  • Our VPN transport uses compression, so everything on the web takes less space and time. We also cache domain lookups for a few minutes. Both of these tweaks can speed up your connection a little bit.

If you think that a government is trying to track what you're doing online, you're probably not wrong, but this service won't protect you from a determined adversary. It will, however, reduce the opportunity for malware to install itself as you're doing your daily browsing.

Policies

The goal of this service is to provide more safety for its users. In exchange, please do not do anything to endanger the service.

Security

  • Your password is encrypted. I don't know what it is, and we're probably both happier that way.
  • Don't use this service to hide your identity while committing a crime. I will comply with US court orders to reveal what I know about who you are, to the extent of my logs.
  • Don't try to use this service to bypass geographic restrictions on content, like watching movies on NetTube or HuFlix or whatever. Those guys know how services like this one work, and the easiest thing for them to do is block this service from getting to their sites.
  • Don't do any l33t cyber warfare stuff that will get my hosting provider in trouble or get this service listed in one of the Threat lists that I use to protect you.
  • Don't probe the VPN server, or it may automatically blacklist your IP address for a while. It's nothing personal, it's just a reality of being on the Internet these days.

Logging

  • Logging detail is limited, and logs are kept for no longer than 2 weeks.
  • Logged: For the VPN service, who logged in and logged out, and when.
  • Logged: What DNS lookups were performed, by whom, at which times.
  • Logged: A noise-gated list of attacks this this site experiences, like all sites do on the modern Internet.
  • Logged: The standard sort of OS-level logs that let me figure out how healthy my system and my service are. There shouldn't be anything about you in those logs.
  • I don't track (nor do I care about) any of the specific pages you visit, or any of the information you put into any of those sites.
  • Warning: It is the nature of VPN technology that a VPN provider can potentially track all of the sites you visit, including all of the details you put into each site, such as credit card or social security numbers. Be careful whom you trust.

This service is still in development, so I'm not asking for money, and I'm not promising to fix any problems you have.

About GlassCleaner

I'm Jim MacLeod, aka shewfig, and I've been doing networking and security for about 20 years. I don't claim that experience makes me an expert, but it does give me knowledge and insight into the bad things that can be done to people and systems on the Internet. I built this service to provide a basic level of protection to people who are just trying to get stuff done online without being mined for marketing by your ISP, without getting redirected to a malicious web site, or without getting hit by a random malware download.

Portions of this site and service are based on the following packages:

  • Pi-Hole: ad blocking, and portions of the daily report page and backing API. Portions of Pi-Hole are based on:
    • AdminLTE: A flexible framework for web dashboards. Portions of AdminLTE are based on:
      • Bootstrap: Mobile-first front-end framework. It's what makes this web UI look nice.
    • Dnsmasq: Lightweight DNS and DHCP server.
  • Critical Stack Intel Feed: Threat Intelligence feed marketplace, collation, and download.
  • OpenVPN: SSL VPN server software.

Thanks, have fun, and be safe.

-Jim