Security News > 2021 > July > In conversation with Gene Hoffman, co-creator of the internet's first ad blocker

The first moment in the fall, when there were thunderstorms rolling through and I downloaded real-time radar data and watched it on, you know, some painful old Macintosh, it was like, "Oh my this is going to be big!".

Had thrown around various ideas, because he was like, "I'll start an ISP," and I'm like, "Not differentiated, not interesting, not a problem." [After] the first ad showed up , and I took a look at that and I went, "I know how this stuff works. That's optional. We should fix that."

For four guys from Chapel Hill who were digging the internet and having a hell of a lot of fun, going and working for PGP was, you know, a dream come true.

Hoffman: We were really excited about the PGP opportunity because it was like, "Look, we all need to be able to know who we're talking to and only who we're talking to," and, you know, we could all kind of look forward and know how we got to the Five Eyes and the NSA. A college buddy of mine was a subcontractor to the NSA, effectively, and he was out intercepting radio transmissions.

You know 11 years ago you kind of didn't know what the application stack needed to look like.

You don't know where it is, you don't know how long it's going to go and you don't know how many banks are going to take obscene amounts of cash off the top of your wire transfer.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/07/08/interview_gene_hoffman/