Shauli Zacks
Published on: December 18, 2024
In a rapidly evolving digital landscape where privacy is often treated as an afterthought, Hoody is redefining what it means to be truly anonymous online. To gain deeper insights into this privacy revolution, SafetyDetectives recently sat down with the CTO and co-founder of Hoody. With over two decades of experience rooted in cybersecurity, privacy, and open-source development, he has built a solution that addresses the gaps left by traditional VPNs. In this exclusive interview, we hear about his journey into cybersecurity, the inspiration behind Hoody’s innovative features, and his vision for the future of privacy-focused cybersecurity.
Can you share your journey into cybersecurity and how it led you to become the CTO of Hoody?
Being the CTO and co-founder of Hoody, started in 2021, having led a team of more than 10 hardcore developers, my journey into cybersecurity began much earlier – as a privacy-obsessed teenager, passionate about programming. Now in my late thirties, I’ve spent over two decades being fascinated by tech, programming, privacy, anonymity and how all the data could be used to profile individuals at scale.
Before Hoody, I was heavily involved in the open-source community, contributing to various projects and running several successful online ventures. My roots go back to the IRC era, where privacy and security were fundamental concerns for early internet communities. I spent years developing personal privacy solutions and sharing knowledge within these communities, watching how the cybersecurity landscape evolved while VPN providers frankly remained stagnant in their approach, it was relatively innovative back in 2010, now using a VPN is nothing to brag about, as it’s not actually making you anonymous.
The rise of fingerprinting, AI, and sophisticated tracking methods made it clear that traditional privacy solutions weren’t enough anymore. I founded Hoody because I wanted to create the privacy solution I wished existed – one that actually protects regular users in today’s threat landscape without compromising their daily internet experience. We want to give access to everyone (in a very easy way) what hardcore privacy fanatics are doing to be truly anonymous.
What inspired the development of Hoody’s unique features, such as per-app VPNs and private browsing containers, and how do they enhance user privacy compared to traditional VPNs?
The main inspiration came from my personal privacy journey as a teenager. I was both fascinated and concerned about mass surveillance and how governments could piece together data to form a “story” about individuals. To be honest, we are moving toward a model similar to China’s, which is extremely concerning.
This led us to develop two core features that define Hoody today. First, our Browsing Containers technology, which creates completely isolated environments for each browsing session. This means your Google login in one container has no idea about your anonymous browsing in another – something traditional VPNs can’t offer. Each container has its own unique fingerprint, cookies, and IP, making it impossible to correlate your activities across different websites.
Second, our Per-App VPN feature was born from a critical privacy reality: if even one app on your device connects through your real IP, it can compromise your entire digital identity. Apps constantly communicate and share data – imagine using a VPN for private browsing while your messaging app or game client exposes your real location. This correlation makes traditional VPNs obsolete. Our system lets each app have its own dedicated network route – your gaming client can use your real IP while your messaging app goes through Switzerland, and your browser through our Bulletproof Location mode, all simultaneously. This level of granular isolation is not just convenient; it’s essential for real privacy.
Today’s VPN users increasingly prioritize privacy contrary to “geo-unblocking” which is becoming irrelevant over time, and with the rise of AI, users are sharing unprecedented amounts of personal info without realizing the implications. Traditional VPNs alone can’t protect users anymore, which is why we’ve expanded our solution to include private AI access alongside these core privacy features.
How does Hoody’s approach to privacy, such as per-app VPNs and private browsing containers, align with the broader trends in cybersecurity?
Hoody looks at privacy from a practical, real-world perspective. Instead of focusing on theoretical privacy concepts, we find actual solutions that protect users without changing their own behavior. On a network level, our Bulletproof Location mode changes IP for each request through double-hop routing, available for both Wireguard and SOCKS5 protocols. Always zero-log, and contrary to traditional VPN providers, we don’t even use any form of external Analytics on Hoody’s website, we do not want to know who our users are and we’ve carefully built everything to ensure we have no control over user’s activities, we can’t monitor it.
We offer complete browsing isolation, which means you don’t fear anymore connecting to Google and later-on accessing another website anonymously. Our Per-App VPN gives you instant control over each app’s location without ever disconnecting your main VPN – want uTorrent through one country, Telegram through another, and Steam through your real IP? Done in one click. You can even use custom SOCKS5 proxies for specific apps or completely firewall others from accessing the internet to further increase your privacy.
Hoody asks for ZERO personal information – no email, no name, just a cryptographic key known only to you. Even payments through traditional gateways like PayPal are completely disassociated from your account. We also provide private AI access, privacy extensions, proxies and a Torrent Gateway that lets users stream and download directly via HTTPS – eliminating the privacy footprint of traditional torrent clients.
Users need to understand that they are always de-anonymized because their activities are correlated across different services, websites and browsers – it’s imperative to isolate everything. Hoody does this transparently while being as minimally invasive as possible for the end-user. As new technologies emerge, we keep expanding our toolkit to address every aspect of digital privacy, because real privacy requires solutions that evolve with new threats, it’s disappointing to see that the VPN industry keep pushing a new narrative every year while not offering anything new.
Fingerprinting is an increasingly prevalent concern. Can you explain how the industry, in general, is addressing this issue, and where Hoody fits into the solution?
Fingerprinting is the most serious privacy threats today, yet it’s barely addressed by the VPN industry. While VPN providers have misled users for the last decade by focusing solely on IP protection, at least 20% of websites now employ fingerprint analysis – operating completely invisibly to track and profile users like never before. Even if you change your IP or use separate browsers, many attributes remain to uniquely identifying you, allowing big tech and governments to compile your entire browsing history, browser extensions or VPNs are not enough to protect this.
The privacy industry hasn’t properly addressed this because it’s a fundamental flaw in how the Internet and especially Javascript works. Traditional solutions like ‘private browsing’ or changing VPN locations are useless against fingerprinting – your browser still exposes thousands of unique identifiers that can be correlated across websites.
At Hoody, we tackle this through our container technology that creates truly isolated browsing environments. Each container has its own randomized fingerprint and IP, making it impossible to correlate your activities across different websites. This isn’t just theory – it’s real protection against how tracking actually works today, and in the future. The truth is, without proper fingerprint spoofing and complete isolation, your privacy is compromised no matter how many VPNs you use. Isolation is the only future proof way.
What role do you think AI will play in shaping the future of cybersecurity and privacy protection?
AI is simultaneously the most promising, fascinating and concerning technology for privacy today. At scale, AI enables instant analysis of user behavior, allowing governments and corporations to compile detailed profiles of citizens by correlating their activities. These profiles are becoming increasingly accurate through pattern recognition and behavioral prediction.
The immediate threat comes from how carelessly users interact with AI providers. Every prompt sent to ChatGPT, Claude, or similar services becomes permanently accessible to tech giants, governments, and countless third parties. Users are sharing unprecedented amounts of personal information without realizing these conversations are forever stored and analyzed. This is why we developed Hoody AI – a complete solution that requires no personal information while still providing access to the same exact AI models with an ever better interface.
Traditional privacy tools will become obsolete as AI systems become better at correlating and de-anonymizing user data across platforms. The future of privacy protection must evolve to counter these AI-powered threats, which is why we’re continuously developing new ways to protect users’ digital identities in this AI-driven world.
Looking ahead, what are the most significant opportunities and threats you foresee for privacy-focused cybersecurity solutions?
The biggest threat is clearly the rapid evolution of AI-powered surveillance and tracking capabilities. Additionally, we’re seeing major companies repeatedly violating their own Terms of Service, accepting fines as just another business cost while trading away user privacy. This shows we can’t rely on corporate promises or governments – the reality is that most entities will compromise user privacy when it benefits them. Users must protect their own privacy at all cost.
We’re entering an era where traditional privacy tools are becoming obsolete against machine learning algorithms that can correlate user behavior across platforms, even with VPN protection. The industry’s failure to innovate beyond simple IP masking is leaving users vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated tracking methods.
The future of privacy protection isn’t about adding more features to outdated technology – it’s about fundamentally rethinking how we approach privacy and who and what is tracking us.
The key is to stay ahead of the curve, anticipating new tracking methods and developing countermeasures before they become widespread threats. At Hoody, we believe privacy should be accessible to everyone, not just tech-savvy users or activists – and that’s the opportunity we’ve seized and this is why thousands of users joined us.
