About ShieldMe
Who I Am
I’m a software engineer with experience in web, desktop, cloud and services development.
Most of my career I’ve been developing business applications in various corporate environments, having many different roles along the way.
I’m very passionate about software and started toying around with pseudo-code, algorithms and design from an early age.
I play VR, binge-watch shows and movies and I tinker or repurpose technology that seems useless at first.
If you’d like to get in touch about anything, feel free to use the above icons near my name & picture.
The why
This is a project that came out of my passion for solving tech challenges, to provide an easy and elegant solution for all who need to use VPN client software on lots of different devices at once.
My main motivation is to bring the VPN benefits by stripping the setup and running complexity for many different scenarios or use cases.
The purpose
Make it easy to use VPN services on a router;Help people secure their online activity;Help people leverage all benefits of their VPN subscription;Democratize access to services around the world.
Behind the curtain - the story
1. The sofa dilemma
Everything started one evening when my wife saw an enticing trailer and wanted to watch the show on the living room TV from the comfort of the couch.
Because we live in Romania, many streaming platforms have lots of geo-restrictions, so an active VPN connection is needed to watch certain shows (including that special one) to bypass this limitation.
While this is an easy thing to achieve on her laptop or phone, watching the same show on the TV was an entirely different story.
She could not find any app for the VPN service on the TV app store.
2. Form versus function
From this point, an epic quest started for me…
The goal: Find a way to get the current VPN service to work with our TV.
The reward: Watch streaming content comfortably directly on TV.
A few hours into researching for different solutions online, after trying and tweaking them, it seemed like a lost cause.
For this reason, I’ve tried persuading my wife to try sharing her screen over the network, or just watch on her computer and even jokingly asked her to get a really long video cable directly into the TV.
Of course, she made it abundantly clear to me that none of these solutions were viable and it wasn’t a question of form versus function.
It was all about getting VPN setup quickly, ease of use and comfort!
3. Light at the end of the tunnel
Eventually, she just gave up on the idea, which meant there was no pressure for me to find a solution right away.
At this point, I had a challenge with a couple of tools at my disposal:
- A network managed by our home router
- An active VPN service subscription
A thought came to my mind: “I’m a software engineer and this is a software problem, so I should definitely write a solution for this.”
This is how the earliest version of ShieldMe became a reality.
The rest is history, with many hours of research and development.
A big reason of being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel is my background as a software engineer for which I am extremely grateful.
