Surfing anonymously (TV/Torrents/etc)

[YorkshireLad6 7,152]

The latest Computer Bild magazine (on newstands from today, and for the next 14 days) includes a FREE subscription to the anonymiser service CyberghostVPN for 12 months.

 

If you buy the CD version (2.70€) or the DVD version (3.70€), but NOT the vanilla version (1.50€) of the magazine you get a license key (printed on the CD/DVD sleeve) which allows you to create and enable a premium account on this service.

 

Once you have opened an account you can download their (Windows only) software which once installed allows you to anonymise your internet use. You can also use the service to setup PPTP and OpenVPN connections on other devices such as smartphones.

 

Why would you need such software? Well, it can be used to fool services such as film, TV or download sites that you are in another country or in a different location and to prevent anyone identifying you or your connection. You can use it to watch Youtube material that may be restricted in Germany or you can download torrents without revealing your real IP address or location to the authorities. You can also use it to surf the internet without revealing your actual location or your IP address. You can use it with another TT username to fool Editor Bob that you don't have a second ID on Toytown (not that I would do that of course).

 

Cyberghost offer a multitude of servers in Germany, one on Romania and one in USA (so essentially you appear to be surfing from these locations). The hosting company do not log your own IP address, nor do they keep any logs of your internet usage, so you are safe from the authorities who may be investigating or watching over upload/download activity or general surfing.

 

I've used the service for 2 years now without problems (curiously Computer Bild make the same offer about every 14 months, so I simply wait for the mag to hit the newstands and extend my existing service). Until this year a server in the UK was also included (useful for BBC iPlayer, etc), but alas no more.

 

The free offer permits up to 10GB of data per month at "full" speed, then throttles the connection back to 512Kb/s. For ad-hoc use this is more than enough for most people, but may not be enough if you are an extreme video downloader. You can switch the service on or off at will, so only need to use up your allowance when you particularly want to surf anonymously.

 

All website and software use is in English, so apart from actually buying the magazine and pulling out the CD/DVD sleeve no German language knowledge is necessary. Were you to want to subscribe to their premium service then you'd normally pay about 5€/month.

[Blue Proteus 0]

Thanks for the heads up. I was about to subscribe to HideMyAss, but will check this out first.

[ant3269 14]

Will it allow me access to BBC I-Player and the like??

[YorkshireLad6 7,152]

 

... Until this year a server in the UK was also included (useful for BBC iPlayer, etc), but alas no more.

 

You can pay money to include UK servers...

[flycgn 2]

Thanks for that tip!

[corsicano 1]

The big brother have an army of dudes that are tracking all those backdoor, proxy servers and software users at the level of your ISP

When you sign on line, they know who you are. Is check also by remote, your email and your ''digital fingerprints''

If you use an stolen computer and hack in somebody internet, they will try to get, who stolen the computer

[bund 6]

Thanks, great tip, I will definately try this as I am checking different options for a VPN.

[John_paul 4]

Hotspotshield?

[YorkshireLad6 7,152]

Hotspotshield is very invasive, is of dubious provenance and is funded by advertising. You can't compare it to a paid-for professional product as Cyberghost is.

[tim555 7]

I've had decent results with vpntunnel (vpntunnel.se) for both TV watching via iPlayer and torrent downloads. Supports OS X and Linux as well.

(Like all the decent ones you have to pay for it)

[Weevil 41]

This is a good tip. Unfortunately when I connect to VPN services (and I've tried a few 'paid for' ones) my connection goes really slow. Normally I have a 50Meg connection through t-online but when I connect to a VPN it goes down to about 6 or 7 Meg if I'm lucky.

 

Does anybody know any fast VPNs?

[Schnee 43]

so no luck for OSX users?

[DeStoken 1]

From an internet security standpoint it really depends on what you are doing. For simple stuff Hidemyass or other VPN's may work, but for actually anonymity you will need something more heavyweight like TOR(google it). For thinks like filesharing and the such, a seed box may be an even better option than VPN.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[FrecheKerl 339]

@Schnee: TOR and HideMyAss have OS X specific clients that work well. I've tried both.

 

I'm not sure about the one YL6 recommends, but HMA is good for low-tech person, TOR is a bit more effort but is free!

 

HMA only cost about $80 for one year and I'm happy with it. Of course the performance on VPN is always slower than normal, this is the price you pay. Particularly after 8PM the speed is miserable, that said so is normal ISP service at that time! If you jump to a more quiet VPN server in other countries, things aren't so bad... depends what you are trying to achieve.

[Chocky 1,223]

 

you will need something more heavyweight like TOR

 

Tor has severe limitations and flaws, read this for an understanding of why:

 

http://dailyanarchist.com/2011/02/02/tor-yes-or-no/

[burningkrome 27]

Cyberghost (and most of the like) is just a public VPN service. It will encrypt your packets, and give you a private cyberghost registered IP addresses. This will prevent hackers from sniffing your location, capturing your data or passwords, and likely prevent things from being installed on your computers (zombies, keyloggers, ETC).

 

But if you're looking to hide yourself from the copyright owners of the DRMs you're cracking and uploading to your pirate site, or protect your connection information while you hack the UN website...it's not going to help at all. The most you could hope for is that cyberghost could, potentially, use legal methods to delay giving up your completely-trackable connection information for a little while when the hacked parties track your IP info back to their VPN source.

[burningkrome 27]

P.s. TOR is better. It constantly wraps and unwraps your encryption packet and reroutes it through a bunch of unnecessary routers with different IP addresses (and spoofing maybe...don't know about that) which would definitely make it a pain to track. But certainly not impossible.

 

"Privacy protection" is like any other form of security. How "good" it is depends entirely on how badly the people wanting to get past it...want to get past it.

 

Again, if you want to protect your identity while you bootleg a 1979 copy of the BeeGee's live world tour...you probably have little to worry about int he first place. If you're thinking these things will be you "ski mask" while you hack NATO. Well, have a nice stay at the penitentiary :-)

 

As for protecting your data...TOR is an interesting concept, because (from end to end) each time the packet is re-encrypted...the odds of your data being seen is reduced by a factor of how hard the encryption is. However, pragmatically, I wouldn't think constantly un-encrypting and re-encrypting the packet would help much. If the packet is captured, it's going to be captured at one instance...meaning only one of the encryptions has to be broken (unless they layer the encryptions...encrypting an encrypted pack inside another encrypted packet. Although, the way VPN encryptions work...I don't think that's really an option that would provide much additional security.)

 

For most instances though, just using data encryption on your PC is probably as solid as anything. I don't know that the performance hit taken from all this re-encrypting and rerouting is worth it...unless you're transferring the passwords to all your Swiss Bank accounts every couple of hours :-)

[rhody 3,170]

Has anyone done a DD-WRT flash on a router and used that for Netflix etc via AppleTV? I am thinking of getting me a cheap Linksys WRT54G or similar (need to check the dd-wrt database) and putting that behind my router so that all of my devices can VPN (haven't decided which service yet either) to watch US programming. Anyone out there got this kind of setup going?

 

As for Tor, a colleague of mine has used it on 100 Mb KabelBW connection but the problem is usually the routing to servers across the world which could be on much slower connections or using slower hardware. Add the encryption time lag and the lowest common denominator in your tor route and it can be excruciatingly slow. But if you can live with that kind of performance, then it appears to be quite untraceable as to who you are and where you come from. Good for the Iranians and Chinese who get worse than slapped with a fine for doing the "wrong" thing on the Internet.

[Schnee 43]

lol, things have just got way too technical for me. I was hoping the Cyberghost offer could work on OSX but, apparently not. I have just downloaded Tor (and it seems it is already out of date). I'm not sure I'm doing it right, and as someone mentionned, I'm not sure it will protect me against the man, should I break my misery and decide to torrent again..

[Chocky 1,223]

 

Has anyone done a DD-WRT flash on a router and used that for Netflix etc via AppleTV?

 

No, I considered it, but didn't want to risk bricking the box. Remember there are only certain iterations of the WRT54 that come with open source capable firmware, apparently Tomato is the best to flash it with. If you try it, please report back here.