GHOSTPORT

PRIVACY BLOG & SECURITY GUIDES

Independently pen-tested · April 2026 Public bug bounty · open to researchers Source-available · auditable AI-assisted development · disclosed

NEW • INFRASTRUCTURE

Self-Healing Architecture

A privacy router that fails silently is a privacy violation in progress. We built three layers of automated recovery — WireGuard tunnel watchdog, compound-trigger dual-radio watchdog, and multi-region failover — to close the exposure window before you notice it opened. Plus: what was happening in 2026 while other routers were down.

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NEW • SURVEILLANCE

The Supreme Court Required a Warrant for Your Location History. The FBI Buys It Anyway.

Chatrie v. United States said police need a warrant to compel your location history. It says nothing about buying the same data from a broker instead — and the FBI director just confirmed under oath that's exactly what his agency does.

NEW • FOUNDER'S NOTE

The Reddit Thread That Put Us On The Map

A brand-new account, a post AutoMod removed in minutes, and 23 comments on a thread that officially never happened. How a technically-removed Reddit post put us at the top of Google in a day.

NEW • SECURITY

Hacker Summer Camp 2026: What Black Hat and DEF CON Said About Routers

AI as both attacker tool and attack surface, Microsoft's push for memory-safe rewrites, and the 2026 router vulnerability wave across Tenda, D-Link, and MikroTik. What Las Vegas hacker con season means for the box on your shelf.

NEW • LEGISLATION

The Privacy Law Patchwork Just Got a Federal Contender

The SECURE Data Act's bid for one federal privacy law, Oklahoma and Alabama becoming the 20th and 21st states with comprehensive privacy statutes, new data-broker registries, and the FTC's PADFAA crackdown.

NEWSLETTER

Privacy Alerts — Direct to Your Inbox

ISP tracking updates, surveillance legislation, data breach digests, and GhostPort product news. No tracking pixels. No third-party senders. Sent when something worth knowing happens.

SONAR

5 BSSIDs from one router

A customer unplugged their Cox gateway and five BSSIDs disappeared at once. What the four hidden ones are doing, why CoxWiFi (and Xfinity, and Spectrum) deserve a closer look, and what GhostPort Sonar makes visible.

SURVEILLANCE

A Single Clerk Signed Off On Tracking Every Nevadan's Phone

Nevada DPS bought warrantless cellphone location surveillance from Fog Data Science for $12K/year. The deal bypassed the governor, AG, and secretary of state — only a state clerk signed it. What Fog does, where the data comes from, what works against it, and a petition to demand warrants.

FOUNDER'S NOTE

Why I built GhostPort

A letter from the founder. Marine Corps Data Systems Administrator, the enterprise-IT incidents that shaped the founding question, and the bet on protecting regular households the way comms get protected in uniform.

DEBUG STORY

Why your PS5's TCP couldn't come home

A trusted-device feature shipped working for UDP and broken for TCP. The cause: a netfilter packet-flow misconception about when the egress destination MAC actually gets written. Debug chain, fix, and the public-repo commit.

REGION TOGGLE

We Just Cut Ping by 52ms for West-Coast Gamers

A regional WireGuard relay in San Jose drops west-coast gamer ping from 76ms to 24ms. SHA256-verified raw transcripts. The honest story of what we built and the framing error we almost shipped.

FIRST PENTEST

Closing the First Bug Bounty

Our first formal external security engagement is closed. 13 findings, three unauthenticated-disclosure fixes shipped, structural changes behind each so they stay fixed.

PACKET CAPTURE

Your Router Is Announcing Itself

A nine-second capture caught a normal home router announcing its make, model, and firmware version twenty times. The SSDP leak nobody talks about.

NO HIDDEN MAGIC

Teachable Security

Per-region help on the desktop apps + a sudo hardening pass that shrinks compromise blast radius to a 40-rule allowlist.

REAL DATA

632 Packets Dropped in 10 Hours

A quiet home network. 632 unsolicited packets silently dropped at the WAN boundary. On a consumer router, all of them reach your devices.

GHOSTPORT OS

GhostPort Phantom OS: Privacy Router Meets Private Desktop

One device, two modes. A custom-built OS stripped to the bone — 612 packages removed, self-healing guards, every feature for every user.

SECURITY

30 Vulnerabilities. 4 Rounds. 0 Mercy.

Before our pen testers even showed up, we ran a 4-round automated security audit and patched 30+ vulnerabilities.

INVESTIGATION

Your Router Can See You Breathe

WiFi sensing is shipping in consumer routers. Comcast, Amazon, Linksys already have it. Here's what it does.

EXPLAINER

Why Your Upload Speed Is So Slow

Cable ISPs deliberately throttle upload speeds. Here's the DOCSIS math and why your ISP likes it that way.

INCIDENT REPORT

Our Response to the Claude Code Source Leak

Anthropic's AI tool leaked. We deployed 5 security layers the same day.

INDUSTRY FIRST

How We Secure AI-to-AI Communication

HMAC signing, AES encryption, replay protection. No other router does this.

FEDERAL STANDARD

NIST Compliance on a Raspberry Pi

We mapped 110 federal cybersecurity controls to an $80 privacy router.

LEGAL SINCE 2017

Your ISP Sells Your Browsing History

Congress repealed your broadband privacy protections. Most people don't know.

HIDDEN COST

The Invisible Tax Your Router Charges You

Your router generates revenue for its manufacturer long after you bought it.

10,000+ DAILY PINGS

What Your Smart TV Sends Home

Your TV phones home thousands of times per day. Here's exactly what it reports.

PLAINTEXT LEAK

DNS: The Privacy Hole Nobody Talks About

Every website you visit is broadcast unencrypted. Your ISP sees all of it.

PROTECT YOUR KIDS

Why Your Kids' Privacy Depends on Your Router

Network-level protection on every device. No apps to install, no settings to bypass.

BYPASSED IN MINUTES

Why App Parental Controls Fail

Kids disable app-based controls in seconds. Network-level blocking can't be touched.

YOUR DATA FOR SALE

Data Brokers Know More Than Your Doctor

Companies you've never heard of buy and sell your browsing history every day.

MYTH BUSTER

What a VPN Actually Does

VPNs don't make you anonymous. Here's what they actually protect and what they don't.

25 STATES AND COUNTING

Half of America Requires Your ID to Browse

Age verification laws are creating a national ID system for the internet.

STILL COLLECTING

The TikTok Ban Failed

They banned the app. The data collection didn't stop. Technical solutions beat legislation.

ABOUT TIME

Advertisers' Death Warrants

The FCC is finally coming for routers that spy on you. Here's what it means.

TRUST BUT VERIFY

Why Open-Source Hardware Matters

Closed firmware can hide anything. Open hardware lets you inspect every line.

ZERO DISK

RAM-Only Servers

If we can't store it, we can't hand it over. Power off and the data is gone.

LIVE TRACKER

AWS Infrastructure Roadmap

Real-time progress on our cloud infrastructure buildout. Updated as we ship.

HEAD TO HEAD

GhostPort vs Firewalla

Open-source transparency vs proprietary black box. Feature-by-feature breakdown.

HEAD TO HEAD

GhostPort vs GL.iNet

Travel routers vs dedicated privacy hardware. Different problems, different answers.

OWNED BY AMAZON

GhostPort vs eero

Amazon owns eero. Amazon is the world's largest ad company. Connect the dots.

WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE

Bug Bounty Program

Find a vulnerability, collect the bounty. Rewards negotiated per finding. No lawyers, no NDAs.

START HERE

GhostPort User Guide

Setup, privacy modes, Family Shield, troubleshooting — everything in one place.

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