SnowHaze

SnowHaze empowers users to regain full control over their personal data on the internet. Its browser and the VPN service allow users to fight against tracking, phishing and data theft. With a simple and accessible solution, SnowHaze meets the needs of privacy-aware internet users. We have combined very technical features into an easy to use interface. The core of SnowHaze VPN is a novel, communication protocol which makes SnowHaze the first and only VPN offering privacy by design - meaning that even SnowHaze doesn't know its users. Big companies put a lot of effort into scraping all the user data they can. Users usually don't know how to avoid this privacy invasion and don't have the time to put a lot of effort into protecting their data. Between privacy and usability we tend to choose usability since we cannot picture the risks. With SnowHaze we managed to combine privacy and usability and convince internet users that data protection just became simpler.

Why should this Project win a DINAcon Award?

SnowHaze dared to develop products for the already highly saturated browser and VPN market because user interests were not properly addressed. SnowHaze is all about giving control over their data and choice of what happens to it to the user. Big companies take advantage of the non tech savvy user to get their data. We gathered all the tools users need to effectively protect their data. Since a private browser alone is not enough and neither is a good VPN service, we decided to combine both to offer the best protection. What sets SnowHaze apart is that everything is developed with a privacy by design approach. That is, we directly integrate data protection into the code. SnowHaze uses no analytics, no logs, no backdoors. For that purpose we developed a novel authentication protocol that allows to use the VPN without having to share information. Even if we wanted to we couldn't identify our VPN users. So far no other VPN is capable of providing similar privacy. The browser contains all the tool to effectively protect from ads, trackers, fingerprinting, phishing, cookies, user agent tracking, referer etc.