+ Alerts

This is where users can see what trackers have been detected or blocked on their device. The alerts are sorted into four types of trackers or unwanted connections. The number at the top of the Alerts menu demonstrates how many times these types of unwanted connections have been blocked or detected. This is a numerical representation of how often these trackers and other connections are attempting to pull information or data from your device.

+ App-Receipt Data

This information can be attached to a message when contacting customer support to troubleshoot problems with restoring an existing subscription to Guardian Firewall on a user's device. It is a receipt validating a purchase through the App-Store which does not contain any personally identifiable information.

+ Data Broker

Or Information Broker - is a company which specializes in collecting information about individuals from public records and private sources, including census and change of address records,,motor vehicle and driving records, user-contributed material to social networking sites, media and court reports, voter registration lists, consumer purchase histories, most-wanted lists and terrorist watch lists, bank card transaction records, health care authorities, and Web browsing histories. [1]

+ Data Monetization

A form of monetization, may refer to the act of generating measurable economic benefits from available data sources (analytics). Data monetization leverages data generated through business operations, available exogenous data or content, as well as data associated with individual actors such as that collected via electronic devices and sensors participating in the internet of things. [2]

+ Encryption

Encryption allows you to securely protect data that you don't want anyone else to have access to by a process of translating plain text data into something that appears to be random and meaningless. Symmetric Encryption is used to encrypt more than a small amount of data and Guardian Firewall uses AES-256 which is a symmetric encryption.  [3]

+ Encryption Software

Software that uses cryptography to prevent unauthorized access to digital information. Cryptography is used to protect digital information on computers as well as the digital information that is sent to other computers over the internet.

+ Firewall

A firewall is software that runs on a network that is designed to block unauthorized access to your personal data or information while still allowing you to use the apps and visit websites normally on your device. There are different types of firewalls regarding how they function but the end goal is the same: Block or prevent unwanted connections from your device as you normally use your computer, mobile phone or tablet.

+ G Shield

The G logo on the connection view of Guardian Firewall. Press to connect or press and hold for 3 seconds to reset the configuration to the server.

+ Host

When a user presses the G Shield to connect, they are connected to one of Guardian's VPN servers which establishes the VPN connection for secure and private internet browsing. The host a user is connected to can be found in the Settings tab of Guardian Firewall app.  

+ IKEv2

Internet Key Exchange version 2 - the protocol used to set up a security association (SA) in the IPsec protocol suite. [4]

+ IPsec

Internet Protocol Security - A secure network protocol suite that authenticates and encrypts the packets of data to provide secure encrypted communication between two computers over an Internet Protocol network. It is used in our Guardian VPN. [5]

+ Proxy

Proxy or Proxy server, is a computer that acts as an access point between a local network such as your device and a larger-scale network such as the internet. These are used as a security measure.    

+ Tracker

A bit of code that is often embedded within the code of an App, website or even email that works to request and retrieve information as you use apps, websites and open emails. They often piggyback off of permissions granted within an app, such as allowing a weather app to use your location to determine weather in your area. The weather app might ping for your location once, but since it has the ability, the tracker within the app may ping for your GPS coordinates multiple times over a short period to record this information into a much larger database.

+ VPN

Virtual Private Network – This is a service that your device connects to in order to encrypt and protect anything that you do while connected to the Internet.

+ WireGuard

One of the communication protocols that Guardian uses to encrypt and authenticate packets of data providing a secure VPN connection.