How to hide your ip » Q&A

Software or Hardware-based VPN Solution?

Heryzo — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:04:37 +0000

We always considered software-based VPN while dealing with private network solutions. This is mainly due to the fact that we considered that the typical readership that we have is considering the use of a VPN for their own purposes only. This means that the most obvious way for them to implement a VPN solution is to add a software on their computer and they should be ready to go. This stands true if there is no need to group multiple users and computers behind a VPN connection. But if we want a whole network to go through a VPN implementation, a dedicated VPN router may be more suitable.

Why a VPN device vs software?

Before digging into the options, let’s see the differences between a software-implemented VPN versus a dedicated VPN device. We are not going to chose a specific vendor, but let’s focus on few items.

Software-based VPN are usually easier to implement as it’s just a matter of installing additional software on the user’s computer, then configuring it with the right parameters. We have to bear in mind, though, that those application will consume more resources on the computer (for encryption purposes for example). Moreover, there’s a higher chance for that VPN system to be hacked as it is common that the computer where the VPN software is installed is also performing other duties.

On the other hand, hardware-based VPN devices are more specialized. Brands like Cisco, Juniper or Netgear have specific VPN device for an kind of use. Although the use of dedicated device will free resources for the user’s computer, one has to be careful while choosing the right device. Let’s see few criteria that need to be used for selecting a hardware-based VPN device

Compatibility: first of all, your VPN device has to be compatible with your current internet connection. Most of the times, those hardware-based devices only come with an Ethernet as well as one other network component (serial, another Ethernet, …). Depending on the internet connection that you’ll be using, the model of VPN device can change. This can be a pain I, later on, you decide to change your internet service provider, or if you want to use a newer internet connection technology. In fact, most of the time, you may end up replacing your current VPN router if you ever consider changing your internet connection
Protocols implemented: here comes the much more technical implementation side of things. Based on the other endpoint where you want to connect, you have to carefully choose the protocols that will be used between your network and the VPN provider. As an example, if your VPN service provider is implementing 3DES, then you need to choose a VPN router that can also communicate with that protocol.

In fact, when it comes to connecting a whole network through a VPN solution, you’re better off opting for a dedicated hardware-base solution. It only does VPN implementation ( no other softwares runs on it that can create some security breaches) thereby freeing resources from the user’s computer.

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Software or Hardware-based VPN Solution?

Why Should You Use Https?

Heryzo — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 08:02:31 +0000

If you ever used some popular online platforms (gmail, facebook, twitter, …), at some point of time they should have asked you if you want to activate https. I don’t know about you, but if I were a regular user who is averse to technical jargon, I’d say “thanks for asking, but what is https?”. The purpose of this article is to give you a simplified (as usual) explanation on what it is, and why you need it.

You know it, most of the websites address all begin with a technical jargon/acronym similar to http://, simply put, HTTP is the protocol used for transferring websites from one webserver to your browser. This has been around for years now and hasn’t changed much. Be careful though, it is different from HTML which is the language used for describing the web page itself.

On HTTP mode, all the transactions, or discussions if you prefer it, that are happening between your browser (Mozilla, chrome or safari, or internet explorer…) are happening in clear text. What does this mean? Let’s take an analogy: if you are using a phone line to call someone else, if a third person (called man-in-the-middle) plugs himself onto the actual phone wire, he would be able to listen to your discussions as there is no protection or whatsoever that hides this discussion from being heard. That’s what actually is happening with HTTP: any man-in-the-middle can listen to your web discussion.

Although it may directly raise a red flag to you, think about it a second time. Just consider the following: you are in a public internet café, and just dropped by to check your gmail (or whatever online e-mail account you have). You open your browser, and enter your username and password through a HTTP connection. Bingo! You’ve just allowed a man-in-the-middle to get access to your credentials (ok, I do admit there won’t always be a man-in-the-middle trying to sniff your password in every internet café, but you have to admit too that the risk is real).

So how do you prevent it from happening? This is where HTTPS connection come handy.Unfortunately, this isn’t yet a commonly used protocol. But major mainstream websites are implementing it although it isn’t turned on by default. At the beginning of this article, I was referring to gmail, facebook and twitter – those aren’t the only websites implementing it, but at least they will protect your traffic from being sniffed.

So how does it protect you: in fact, when using the HTTPS protocol (the website you are viewing is using https:// instead of http://), every traffic going between your browser and the website you are accessing is encrypted, thereby making it very difficult for a man-in-the-middle to decrypt it and have access to your credentials. Now, at least you know that when you have activated https for your service, you can be sure that you are giving a hard time to the hacker that is quietly waiting inside (or outside) the internet café waiting for you to enter your credentials. The bad thing though (because there’s always a bad thing, isn’t it), there’s not a On/Off button that switches on or off the HTTPS for every website you are trying to access, you have to do it on a case-by-case basis. I know it can be a lot of hurdle, but it’s definitely worth the effort.

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Why Should You Use Https?

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Help, My Windows 7 Doesn’t Connect with My VPN Solution

Heryzo — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 05:25:44 +0000

Most of how-to-hide-ip.info readers are Windows 7 users. While using my VPN solution, which comes with an openVPN client, I found out that sometimes everything seems to be connecting fine: I enter my credentials, then the connection log displays with a lot of information that barely make sense to a regular user that don’t want to care about what’s said. After a few lines, Windows shows on the status bar that I am now connected through my VPN, it even shows that I now have a 10.10.10.x IP address.

Most of regular users would think that when this Windows message stating that the VPN connection is established shows up, everything is fine and that they now have a secure VPN connection. They think they can now access services like Hulu, spotify or any geo-targeted website. Then, surprise, when they try to access this site, they still have the regular message “content not available for your country”. What’s happening? Didn’t I use my VPN connection? Is this VPN solution I opted for lying to me? ….

Most advanced user will then try to verify what IP address the whole internet think they have. So let’s say that I am based in Madagascar, and I usually an IP address similar to 41.x.x.x . If I go to places like Whatsmyipaddress.com, it will confirm that I am actually based in Madagascar. If I used a VPN connection, and if this connection was setup correctly, Whatismyipaddress.Com would see that I now have a 208.x.x.x –like IP address, and it will think that I am somewhere in Los Angeles, or whatever VPN endpoint that I would have chosen.

However, most of the times, when you run an OpenVPN client on Windows 7, everything seems to be connecting fine although the whole internet still thinks you are not behind a VPN, though you’re still showing your original country IP address.

In fact, it’s not an issue with the VPN provider that you opted for. A lot of people are using this software so it must be working, right? It’s not your fault too, as you are proceeding the way it should be, which is: use the OpenVpn client, enter your credentials and then hit “connect”, wait for the client to confirm that you are actually connected.

The issue resides in the fact that some OpenVpn client are launched at Windows startup phase, but with the wrong credentials. In fact, in order to be able to do low-level network configuration, the OpenVpn need to be run with Administrator privileges. That’s where the issue lies. Most OpenVpn clients aren’t run with administrator privilege at startup, though some network components failed to successfully load.

Luckily, the solution is pretty simple: you first need to stop the currently running OpenVpn client (this usually is a matter of exiting from the OpenVpn). Then you need to relaunch the OpenVpn with administrator mode. This is usually just a matter of right-clicking on the OpenVpn icon, then chose “Run as administrator”. Now you should have the OpenVpn client running, then you can connect and whtismyipaddress.com should find your VPN IP for this session.

This is a bit tricky and can sometimes lead you to unpredictable results. Now we’d like to hear from you any other issues you had while using your VPN connections. Tell us more in the comment section.

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Help, My Windows 7 Doesn’t Connect with My VPN Solution

Is a Free VPN Safe?

Heryzo — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 07:28:41 +0000

In one of the series of article I wrote about FreeUSvpn.com free VPN service, one of the commenters asked if it’s safe to use this service. I’m going to bring my two cents to this critical question – and rather than answer for the particular VPN service quoted above, I’d like to address this in a broader point of view.

So let’s consider a VPN service. How does it actually work? Let’s just take a simplified vision:

- You chose a VPN provider – let’s say xxVPN.com,

- You are then usually given credentials and a software for connecting through the VPN. On a basic package, your operating systems already comes with a VPN client software – you only have to configure it properly provided that you have all the needed information (the protocols used, the encryption supported, …). I’m not going to get into the details of the protocols for encrypting whether it is for the header or for the body of the IP packet,

- On some more elaborate VPN packages, the provider will give you an additional software that eases the installation and configuration process. This usually is a proprietary software,

- Then you use your credentials to setup the VPN connection. This VPN actually is a kind of tunnel where all your traffic goes through before reaching the internet/intranet. On the same time, it “impersonates” you by giving you a temporary IP address that will be visible by the whole internet – though “hiding” your actual IP address

- All your internet traffic then goes through this one single tunnel.

Now let’s see this whole process from a safety point of view and bring some elements of answers to the question raised on the title of this article. I’m going to ask you to answer the following questions first:

- To what degree would you trust a third-party provider that you barely know who promises you some kind of security by asking you to route all your traffic through their unknown tunnel?

- How do you actually check if all your traffic are actually encrypted?

- How do you ensure that your traffic are actualy strongly encrypted so that no man-in-the-middle would be able to sniff it and decrypt it easily?

- Would you conduct a private transaction (let’s say bank-related transaction for example) by going through a third party provider that you haven’t done any business before and that still needs to earn your trust?

Check your answers, and if you are hesitating for any of those questions, then I’d recommend you not use those services for any privacy-concern-related activities you’d do on the internet.

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Is a Free VPN Safe?

Q&A: What’s the difference between SOCKS and HTTP proxies?

HideIP Admin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 06:35:59 +0000

Q: While looking for proxies on proxy sites (for example on SamAir.ru), I see both HTTP and SOCKS proxies. What is the difference between those two? What type of proxies should I choose?

A: SOCKS is a protocol that allows nearly every type or application to be tunneled through it while HTTP is specialized for HTTP but can sometimes be used for other stuff as well.

Also HTTP proxies can be used to increase or decrease the anonymity and privacy you gain through them as they can change parts of the content that is transmitted, SOCKS is just plain data transfer without adding or removing anything of the content transmitted.

SOCKS uses a handshake protocol to inform the proxy software about the connection that the client is trying to make and may be used for any form of TCP or UDP socket connection, whereas an HTTP proxy analyzes the HTTP headers sent through it in order to deduce the address of the server and therefore may only be used for HTTP traffic.

The following examples demonstrate the difference between the SOCKS and HTTP proxy protocols: [Via Wikipedia]

SOCKS

Bill wishes to communicate with Jane over the internet, but a firewall exists on his network between them and Bill is not authorized to communicate through it himself. Therefore, he connects to the SOCKS proxy on his network and sends information about the connection he wishes to make to Jane. The SOCKS proxy opens a connection through the firewall and facilitates the communication between Bill and Jane.

HTTP

Bill wishes to download a web page from Jane, who runs a web server. Bill cannot directly connect to Jane’s server, as a firewall has been put in place on his network. In order to communicate with the server, Bill connects to his network’s HTTP proxy. His internet browser communicates with the proxy in exactly the same way it would the target server—it sends a standard HTTP request header. The HTTP proxy reads the request and looks for the Host header. It then connects to the server specified in the header and transmits any data the server replies with back to Bill.

In most cases configuring applications to use a SOCKS proxy is done in much the same way as configuring them to use HTTP proxies. Applications that support SOCKS proxies will have a separate entry in the menu or configuration dialogue where HTTP proxies are configured which let you configure a SOCKS proxy. Some applications will ask you to choose between SOCKS 4 and SOCKS 5 proxy settings, and in most cases SOCKS 5 is the better option, although some SOCKS proxies may only work with SOCKS 4.

Conclusion

You can think of SOCKS proxies as a more advanced version of HTTP proxies, that allow many different kinds of Internet traffic from many different protocols to be sent through a tunnel, thereby bypassing blocks.

As both types of proxies will hide your IP address, you should choose the type that is accepted by the application you need to anonymize. If both HTTP and SOCKS are available, I advise you to use SOCKS as they are faster.

Are you looking for excellent proxies? Here is what I recommend: Anonymous Proxies.

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Q&A: What’s the difference between SOCKS and HTTP proxies?

What’s the difference between PPTP VPN and OpenVPN?

HideIP Admin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:38:36 +0000

VPN services are more and more used to hide IP addresses and provide anonymity due to their simplicity and efficiency. Most of these services offer connections through PPTP protocol and some offer OpenVPN connections. Both are functionally the same, in that they both are VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). As far as anonymity, both offer encryption and they hide your IP address.

What is the difference between those two? Which one should you choose? Next, I will try to answer these questions.

PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol)

PPTP is popular because it is easy to configure and it was the first VPN protocol that was supported by Microsoft Dial-up Networking.

The problem is that PPTP does not provide confidentiality or encryption. It relies on the protocol being tunneled to provide privacy.

A typical upgrade path for PPTP is L2TP/IPsec. The adoption of improved VPN technologies has been slow because PPTP is convenient and easy to configure, whereas L2TP/IPsec requires a shared key or machine certificates.

OpenVPN

OpenVPN is a free and open source virtual private network (VPN) program for creating point-to-point or server-to-multiclient encrypted tunnels between host computers.

OpenVPN uses the OpenSSL library to provide encryption of both the data and control channels. It lets OpenSSL do all the encryption and authentication work, allowing OpenVPN to use all the ciphers available in the OpenSSL package.

PPTP or OpenVPN?

Let’s compare these two on the following criteria:

Installation

PPTP is still offered as a way to connect due to its simplicity. You can set up a PPTP connection with no software at all. OpenVPN is a little more difficult to set up but with the right tutorials an average computer user should not encounter any problems.

Security

OpenVPN is considered to be extremely secure when compared to the PPTP VPN, and also more stable. Plus one for OpenVPN.

Mobile Devices

Iphone, Ipod Touch, Windows Mobile, all work with PPTP. These are very easily setup, and just a Host Name, Login and Password will have you connected. OpenVPN does not work on such devices.

Conclusion

To sum up, if you are looking for high security and privacy you should choose OpenVPN. If you need easy-to-setup VPN, PPTP is a good choice. For mobile devices, PPTP is the only solution.

Are you looking for good VPN services? Here is a list of top VPN providers.

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What’s the difference between PPTP VPN and OpenVPN?

Q&A: How to send an email to look as sent from another country?

HideIP Admin — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 07:52:26 +0000

I got this interesting question from one of my readers: how do I send an email so that my laptop shows I am visiting Australia? It does not matter why my reader needed this, let’s see how to solve the problem.

To find the IP of an email sender is, most of the times, an easy task. This info is kept in the header of each email sent or received, so what you have to do is to find the header and know where to look for the IP. You can read in one of my previous posts exactly how to do this.

Back to the problem, if you need to make in such way that the emails you send look as coming from another country, you need to change your IP address.

Email Sent Using Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird

If you are using Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird or other desktop application to send you emails the best solution is to use a VPN service. The downsides of this approach are that you have to find a VPN service with IP addresses in the country you need and you have to pay for them.

Good news for those that want to send emails from US, Netherlands, Japan, Germany and France. There are several FREE VPN services that can help you:

United States: Hotspot Shield
Netherlands: AlonWeb, ItsHidden
Germany: CyberGhost VPN
Japan: PacketiX VPN
France: UltraVPN

For the others, I recommend using the webmail for sending your message. It is not worth to spend the money ($10-20) and the time to search for a proper VPN.

Email Sent From Webmail

If you want to send the email from Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or webmail the solution is simple and effective. Here are the steps you need to perfom:

1. Go to proxy4free.com and look for a proxy from the country you need (Australia for the one that asked this). You should choose a high anonymous or anonymous proxy.

2. Set up your browser to use the proxy. Here is how for to do it for different browsers:

3. Go to MyIPTest.com and check your IP address. If it shows the country you need then it is ok. If not, search for another proxy.

4. Load the webmail page (GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc), login and send the email. It may run a little bit slow.

5. You are done!

If you want to make sure this works you could send an email to you and then check the headers of the email for the IP address.

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Q&A: How to send an email to look as sent from another country?

How To Pay For a VPN Service If You Don’t Have a Credit Card

HideIP Admin — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 09:23:23 +0000

If you are seeking for total online anonymity then VPN services are a right way to go. There are several free such services, but as anything free, they come with significant drawbacks (a lot of ads, slow connection speed, etc.).

What if you decide to pay for a premium VPN service? What are your options if you don’t have a credit card as most of the internet users from China, India, etc. don’t. Then, you should use PayPal. Here are the step you could follow. This is not going to take you 5 minutes, maybe 1 week or 1 month, but it’s a working solution.

1. Create a PayPal account

Go to PayPal.com and create an account. Choose the Personal account and fill in the required info. My advice is to use an email address that you plan to use for a longer period of time. After your account is ready proceed with the next step.

2. Fill your PayPal account with money

This is the most difficult step, but with a little bit of effort you should be able to do it. The idea is that you need money to pay for the service and you have to work for them.

There are plenty of forums that offer simple online jobs that can be performed by (almost) anyone. Go, for example, on DigitalPoint forums, to the Services section, and browse for threads with the subjects containing WTH (Want To Hire) string. If you find something interesting that you think you could do, create an account, send a message to the job poster and … start working.

You should be able to easily do $10-20/month that would be enough to proceed with the next step.

3. Find a VPN service that accepts PayPal

There are VPN services that do not accept PayPal payments like Relakks, IPredator, BananaVPN, etc., but others do. Here are 6 such services:

StrongVPN – from $15/month
HideMyAss – from $11.32/month
HideIPVPN Premium – $9.99/month

That’s it! Good luck and keep me up to date to your progress!

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How To Pay For a VPN Service If You Don’t Have a Credit Card

Q&A: How to hide your IP address without installing any software?

HideIP Admin — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 06:24:34 +0000

If you are not willing or you don’t have sufficient rights to install software on the computer you use for browsing there are only 3 options you can use to hide your IP address and browse anonymously:

1. Web Proxies

A web proxy is basically a web site that acts as an intermediate between you and the site you visit. You enter the address/URL of the site you want to visit in a text box, press Submit/Go button and then the proxy asks for the site/page to the web server where the site/page is located. This way the site you visit is not able to log your real IP address, but the IP of the proxy.

This method is very useful to unblock sites like MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, etc., in schools or at work where such sites are filtered.

There are plenty of proxies you can use. Just google “free web proxy“, “unblock myspace“, “unblock facebook“, etc. and you’ll get what you need. Also, you can check for proxies listed by country on Hide-IP-Proxy.info.

2. Proxies

The second solution involves some manual configuration. You need to set up your browser to use a certain proxy. The configuration is not difficult. Here is how to do it for Firefox, IE, Chrome and Safari:

Now, you need a proxy. There are a lot of sites that list fresh proxies, but finding a good one is a difficult task. Here are several site where you can start looking:

3. VPN Services with PPTP protocol

The third option is to look for VPN services that use PPTP protocol, such that they do not require any software installation, just some Windows configuration (you may not have sufficient administrative rights to be able to do this). Here is how to configure Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Some VPN services that use PPTP protocol are:

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Q&A: How to hide your IP address without installing any software?

Q&A: Can i use Ultrasurf if the port 9666 is locked?

HideIP Admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:00:30 +0000

Q: Can i use ultrasurf if the port 9666 is locked?

A: Unfortunatly, there is no way to run Ultrasurf if port 9666 is blocked. This port is used by Ultrasurf to connect to the Ultrareach servers and re-route your traffic.

As mentioned in the Ultrasurf Faq / Question 11, in the future versions it will be possible to change the port from 9666 to a various port number overcoming this problem, but this is not possible in the current version (9.4).

What to do if Ultrasurf is blocked?

If port 9666 is locked, the only solution is to look for alternatives. Here are 2 products, also free, that I recommend: NotMyIP (no longer available) and Hotspot Shield. NotMyIP is new product very similar to Ultrasurf and Hotspot Shield is a free VPN service.

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Q&A: Can i use Ultrasurf if the port 9666 is locked?

How to hide your ip » Q&A

Software or Hardware-based VPN Solution?

Related Posts

Why Should You Use Https?

Related Posts

Help, My Windows 7 Doesn’t Connect with My VPN Solution

Related Posts

Is a Free VPN Safe?

Related Posts

Q&A: What’s the difference between SOCKS and HTTP proxies?

Related Posts

What’s the difference between PPTP VPN and OpenVPN?

PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol)

OpenVPN

PPTP or OpenVPN?

Are you looking for good VPN services? Here is a list of top VPN providers.

Related Posts

Q&A: How to send an email to look as sent from another country?

Related Posts

How To Pay For a VPN Service If You Don’t Have a Credit Card

1. Create a PayPal account

2. Fill your PayPal account with money

3. Find a VPN service that accepts PayPal

Related Posts

Q&A: How to hide your IP address without installing any software?

1. Web Proxies

2. Proxies

3. VPN Services with PPTP protocol

Related Posts

Q&A: Can i use Ultrasurf if the port 9666 is locked?

Related Posts