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Privacy and security activist

About me

Introduction

Nice to meet you. I am Jeroen and go by the handle h3artbl33d. I am a Unix system engineer during the day, hacker by night. Dutch nationality, late-30s, addicted to coffee and philosophy. I (deeply) value ethics, human rights and respect. In the modern era, values like privacy and freedom are under constant attack. I am hugely opposed to this and try to help out wherever I can for a more humane world.

Stats

  • Age: late thirties
  • Nationality: Dutch
  • Location: the Netherlands
  • Fuel: Proper coffee
  • Marital status: Occupied

What I do

  • Work: Founder of a B2B IT provider.
  • Hobbies: Computers, infrastructure, security research, reading, TV series, cooking, gardening, fighting sports, philosophy and psychology.
  • Languages: Dutch, English, (some basic) German and Swedish.

Technical skills

  • Operating systems: OpenBSD, HardenedBSD, GrapheneOS, Linux (various distros including CloudLinux, EL, Arch, Alpine, Slackware)
  • Security: Defense in depth, hardening, exploit mitigations, compliance, monitoring
  • Automation: Ansible, shell scripts
  • Development: PHP, Python, Perl, scripting

Community involvement

  • Founder and primary admin of Exquisite.social and Exquisite.tube - which are, respectively: Mastodon and Peertube. They are federated alternatives for big tech platforms.
  • Board member and chief infrastructure with EuroBSDcon.
  • Board member and co-founder of BSD-NL.
  • Board member, technical guy, pack mule and helping hand for a foundation against poverty.

Talks

  • Liberating the social web using BSD - given together with Stefano at EuroBSDCon 2025, Zagreb, Croatia
  • Defending the Democracy using BSD - given at EuroBSDCon 2023, Coimbra, Portugal
  • Defending the Democracy using BSD - given at NLUUG 2023, Utrecht, Netherlands
  • OpenBSD: Security in a hostile world - given at DBLUG 2019, Den Bosch, Netherlands

Trivia

  • I like to selfhost everything
  • I have found and responsibly disclosed numerous security vulnerabilities
  • I have a propedeuse in psychology

This server

This is a tiny OpenBSD VM (1C, 2G, 50GB), with OpenBSD.Amsterdam. It runs a couple of websites and an email stack (OpenSMTPD, Dovecot, Rspamd).

Contact me