Comment by dhaavi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dhaavi | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks for your interest.

(1) Are you planning on having support for more than 5 devices at a future point?

5 devices is what we estimate 1 user has (avg max). If there is demand, we will definitely add a plan to support more devices (or users).

(2) Will you have any features to support parents protection of their children?

We already collect NSFW filter lists to be activated in the settings. Otherwise such features are tricky, as we need to start protecting against the person in front of the device, which is very hard. If you have suggestions, please share!

(3) How easy is it to integrate Safing into a home security stack, or an enterprise security stack?

Can you elaborate on what exactly you have in mind? We don't offer any integrations with other system out of the box yet. We have APIs though that you can use.

(4) Have you considered a one-time unlimited buy-in level in lieu of monthly?

We had a couple lifetime plans on our Kickstarter (years ago). Right now, we don't have any plans for this. You can pay in advance though - up to 4 years.

(5) Is this coming for iOS & MacOS?

Yes. Or, at least we will attempt. Going to be "fun" if Apple continues their locking down strategy. Maybe the EU will force them to open up until then. Expect at least 1-2 years for this to land though.

>(1) Are you planning on having support for more than 5 devices at a future point?

>5 devices is what we estimate 1 user has (avg max). If there is demand, we will definitely add a plan to support more devices (or users).

I'd estimate for a family plan (my case) we'd have 5 users. Given that I am on HN and part of the technocrati collective we have a ton of devices, particularly once your iOS & Mac OS coverage kicks in too.

>(2) Will you have any features to support parents protection of their children?

>We already collect NSFW filter lists to be activated in the settings. Otherwise such features are tricky, as we need to start protecting against the person in front of the device, which is very hard. If you have suggestions, please share!

I think it would be person in front of the device, but a NSFW filter list is the min requirement, sounds like you already meet that.

>(3) How easy is it to integrate Safing into a home security stack, or an enterprise security stack?

>Can you elaborate on what exactly you have in mind? We don't offer any integrations with other system out of the box yet. We have APIs though that you can use.

Aggregating logs across all devices protected. I don't know if syslog would be best, as there are options

Unified console for centralized control of all instances would be a stretch goal

Thanks for elaborating.

Shopping logs is easy technically, but what to put in there? Just mirror the logs from the local instance or just limit it to connections? Which format, what data?

We recently switched to an in-mem SQLite database for querying connections. In the future, we'd like to send the rows to a central instance of the user, with a UI for querying everything at once.

Also, creating setting templates for apps and enforcing certain settings on many devices is something that seems useful.

Note: This is all quite far out.

Rather insightful on (2) with regard to:

    > ... we need to start protecting against the person in front of the device

My first thought was, "Oh, God, please don't". I'm a parent, if I put that software on the computer it comes with rules not to touch it; if it's touched, they know I'll probably find out, ban them from it for a bit and return it to them locked down in a manner that when I return it to its original state, they won't touch it again. :o).

But then I thought of the other common reason this kind of capability is added to software -- are you preparing for the eventual future where you will have to do this, not to protect from a child removing the software, but to protect from another app surreptitiously removing Portmaster in order to bypass its protections?

Yes. Good points.

Well, the first thing we might do is just a "Only an Administrator can make changes." setting where you only admin accounts are allowed to change settings. This one makes sense. Everything beyond that gets complicated and easy to circumvent fast.

(I also think the original question was more about blocking features and the likes.)

Protecting against other software is related, but also different. We have some decent protection here, albeit not against simply shutting Portmaster down.

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