Ben and Shawn built SecureTunnel from scratch in 2002 because they believed in internet privacy — not because it was a trend, and not to flip it. A real product built by people who gave a damn, at a time when most people didn't even know what a VPN was.
We ran it for 13 years under our own names, on our own infrastructure, with no investors and no holding company behind us. Every decision was ours. Every promise was ours to keep.
In 2015, we didn't get acquired. We weren't breached. Running it the right way — without cutting corners on security, without selling user data, without outsourcing support — burned us out. We walked away with our integrity intact. The industry filled the void with companies that had no such reservations.
We told our subscribers first. Gave them time to move. That wasn't a requirement — it was just the right thing to do.
"We will shut this down before we sell it out. We've done it once. That option is always on the table."
Most of the VPNs you've heard of are now owned by a handful of companies with deep roots in adware and data collection. The privacy tools people trust to protect them are run by the same industry they're trying to hide from. We watched that happen from the sidelines.
We're back with better technology, better automation, and zero intention of selling out. Same founders. Same values. The domain has been in our continuous possession since 2002 — verify it yourself at lookup.icann.org.