The end of the year is approacing quickly bringing reflections on the year past. Reading about the ‘Group Writing Project: 2009 in Review’ hosted by Daniel Scocco on his Daily Blog Tips blog – I decided to list seven VPN services that were launched in the last year and helped a lot of people to:
- Overcome censorship in countries like China, Iran, UAE, etc.
- Access blocked and georestricted websites
- Watch Hulu.com, Pandora.com, ABC.com, BBC.co.uk from anywhere
- Protect yourself from snoopers at Wi-Fi hotspots, hotels, airports, corporate offices and ISP hubs.
- Hide your IP address for your privacy online
IPREDator
World’s most famous bittorrent network ThePirateBay launched in June 2009 its own VPN service. Unlike any other VPN service IPREDATOR assures that no user activity logs of anykind is stored. The VPN service was designed to give you a private and 100% secure internet access. It uses 128bit encryption to make sure that no one, not even your IPS, is able to peek in your data transfers.
The name of the service mocks the swedish Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) legislation which empowers copyright holders get personal details of file-sharing users from ISP’s.
HideIpVPN
HideIpVPN was launched in September 2009 and it’s a very popular VPN service, according to Hide-IP-Tools.com. The service hides your IP address (using VPN technology) and exposes UK or US IP addresses instead of your real one. This allows you to unblock a lost of restricted sites and protect your online privacy.
One of the most appreciated features of HideIpVPN service is that it offers 100 free accounts each month.
AceVPN
Ace VPN is a VPN service that you can use to privately and securely surf and download on the internet without leaving a trace and/or being tracked. Beside the free version that is by invitation only, Ace VPN offers a premium service for $5/month. AceVPN allows P2P traffic only for premium accounts.
AceVPN requests their users to limit the upload and the download speed to 100kbps, so that it does not affect other users on the network.
[AceVPN]
ItsHidden
ItsHidden is a free VPN that works on BitTorrent (BT) traffic including uploading and downloading transfer. Thus, it’s useful for users who torrent traffic been throttled by their ISP, or users who need to hide themselves for anti-piracy organizations from sharing copyrighted materials.
TheFreeVPN
TheFreeVPN is a free service that lets users surf the web privately also allowing them to bypass internet censorship. Unfortunatelly, it comes with a price: annoying ads. You can choose from 3 US servers (one special for watching Hulu), 3 UK servers and 1 Canada server (this is the only free Canada VPN that I know!).
HideMyAss
HideMyAss Pro VPN is an easy to use application which anonymously encrypts your entire internet connection. The tool automatically works with any application or protocol including p2p/bit-torrent.
12vpn
12vpn is a reliable VPN service with three server locations for OpenVPN, PPTP, and L2TP setups, based in the UK and US. What I like most about 12vpn is that you can switch servers, if you wish, by logging in to your account area and selecting another, but 12vpn maintains that it auto-selects the best choice for you based on your location.
[12vpn]
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4 Comments
Just to clarify, ipredator is NOT a new service. It’s just Relakks, with a new name stuck on top of it – as confirmed by Sunde after we caught them trying to pass it off as “new.” Full details and citations of underlying reference documentation:
http://www.irelakksator.com
Additionally, Sunde has admitted that because the old Relakks network (which was abandoned, with customer funds disappearing, in 2008 by whomever owns it – they’ve never explained any of that) is built on pptp proprietary VPN tools, that “IPREDator is very much a political statement more than anything else.” That’s right, this “privacy service” uses technology that’s so badly broken it can’t even promise to protect privacy! Sunde only made this admission after I demanded he justify how they could put forth the re-animated Relakks stuff as a viable “privacy service” despite the many flaws exposed in it.
The original research by cryptographic guru Bruce Schneier on the PPTP protocol – and why it’s inherently, structurally insecure and should NEVER be trusted with important security issues, is available in full here:
http://cultureghost.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=8143
Regards,
Fausty
Chief Technology Officer
Cryptocloud Secure Networking
@Fausty | cryptocloud.net – Thank you for the info. Still, even it’s re-branded, I would consider IPREDator as a new service
@admin: fair enough; so long as it’s honest about being a rebranded version of an existing service I certainly have no problem with them.
It’s unfortunate, because like most folks I have a deep respect for the leading role The Pirate Bay has played in the past – they deserve full credit for that. Perhaps that’s why I am so disappointed by the less than forthright way they’ve handled Ipredator. I wished them nothing but success, when the project was announced – the whole idea of “competitors” is a bit silly, in our market. We see the market so limited by good providers that ANY genuine effort to provide privacy service is absolutely to be applauded.
But, when someone starts “cutting corners” in the honest department, it threatens to make the entire market seem shady and unreliable. That isn’t acceptable – it absolutely serves the interests of the censors and state eavesdroppers. That baseline of honest should be absolutely fundamental to our industry – whatever other things we may agree or disagree on, operationally.
Being the one to “blow the whistle” on the Relakks rebranding brought me no satisfaction, nor made us many friends – it’s still the right thing to do. If we hold each other to good standards of conduct, we will have better success in reaching more folks with crypto privacy service. For me, anyway, that’s the real goal of the work itself.
Regards,
Fausty
Yes, I would like to try again for a free licence, count me in AGAIN!
8 Trackbacks
[...] 7 VPN Services Launched In 2009: The end of the year is approacing quickly bringing reflections on the year past. Reading about the ‘Group Writing Project: 2009 in Review’ hosted by Daniel Scocco on his Daily Blog Tips blog – I decided to list seven VPN services that were launched in the last year and helped a lot of people. (by Adrian) [...]
[...] 7 VPN Services Launched In 2009: The end of the year is approacing quickly bringing reflections on the year past. Reading about the ‘Group Writing Project: 2009 in Review’ hosted by Daniel Scocco on his Daily Blog Tips blog – I decided to list seven VPN services that were launched in the last year and helped a lot of people. (by Adrian) [...]
[...] 7 VPN Services Launched In 2009: The end of the year is approacing quickly bringing reflections on the year past. Reading about the ‘Group Writing Project: 2009 in Review’ hosted by Daniel Scocco on his Daily Blog Tips blog – I decided to list seven VPN services that were launched in the last year and helped a lot of people. (by Adrian) [...]
[...] 7 VPN Services Launched In 2009: The end of the year is approacing quickly bringing reflections on the year past. Reading about the ‘Group Writing Project: 2009 in Review’ hosted by Daniel Scocco on his Daily Blog Tips blog – I decided to list seven VPN services that were launched in the last year and helped a lot of people. (by Adrian) [...]
[...] 7 VPN Services Launched In 2009: The end of the year is approacing quickly bringing reflections on the year past. Reading about the ‘Group Writing Project: 2009 in Review’ hosted by Daniel Scocco on his Daily Blog Tips blog – I decided to list seven VPN services that were launched in the last year and helped a lot of people. (by Adrian) [...]
[...] 7 VPN Services Launched In 2009: The end of the year is approacing quickly bringing reflections on the year past. Reading about the ‘Group Writing Project: 2009 in Review’ hosted by Daniel Scocco on his Daily Blog Tips blog – I decided to list seven VPN services that were launched in the last year and helped a lot of people. (by Adrian) [...]
[...] 7 VPN Services Launched In 2009: The end of the year is approacing quickly bringing reflections on the year past. Reading about the ‘Group Writing Project: 2009 in Review’ hosted by Daniel Scocco on his Daily Blog Tips blog – I decided to list seven VPN services that were launched in the last year and helped a lot of people. (by Adrian) [...]
Group Writing Project: 90 Reviews of 2009…
All right guys, we finally have the final list of entries for the “2009 in Review” group writing project. we had 90 participants in all sorts of niches, and it was interesting to compile the list of entries. I am sure you will have fun reading them as …