Last Updated: April 2026 — Lab tested on pfSense 2.7.2, Proxmox 8.1, Home Assistant 2024.4
Nolan Voss
Former Penetration Tester. Home Lab Builder.
12 years in enterprise IT security. Based in Austin, Texas. Every review on this site starts with a real test in a real lab.
// LAB SPECS
Who I Am
My name is Nolan Voss. I spent 12 years in enterprise IT security — the last four as a penetration tester at a fintech firm in Austin, Texas. I tested production networks for a living, which means I spent those years finding the gaps between what vendors claim and what their products actually do under real conditions.
In 2022 I went independent. I now work as a security consultant for small and mid-size businesses, and I run this site as a side project. The home lab I built for client work became the testing environment for SpywareInfoForum. Every product I review gets tested on the same hardware I use for paid engagements.
I built SpywareInfoForum because I was tired of VPN reviews that consist of a speed test on a single Windows laptop and a summary of the privacy policy. My reviews are different. I run VPNs through a pfSense firewall with Suricata IDS enabled. I capture traffic in Wireshark and check for unexpected connections. I verify kill switch behavior by physically severing the WAN uplink. I run DNS leak tests 500 times, not once.
The result is reviews that reflect real-world lab conditions rather than vendor marketing. I do not accept payment for coverage. I do not rank products based on affiliate commission rates. When something fails in my lab I publish the failure with specifics — the exact error, the exact setting, the exact fix.
nolan@proxmox-lab:~$ cat career_summary.txt
My Testing Methodology
- VPN latency measured in milliseconds from Austin TX to nearest exit node
- Throughput tested with iperf3 on dedicated 1Gbps test VLAN
- DNS leak test run 500 times on dnsleak.com and dnsleaktest.com
- Kill switch verified by physically severing WAN uplink on pfSense
- IPv6 and WebRTC leak checks on every product tested
- Traffic captured in Wireshark and analyzed for unexpected connections
- Password managers tested with YubiKey 5 NFC hardware key integration
- Hardware devices benchmarked under sustained load — never idle conditions
- Every product tested for minimum 7 days before review is published
- Every review includes a WHO SHOULD NOT BUY section — no exceptions
Questions about methodology, corrections, or press inquiries: