VirtualPrivateNetwork
Latest
Hands on with WiTopia's VPN service
This week, I gave WiTopia's VPN a try. And to be quite honest, it wasn't exactly the experience I was hoping for. As I discussed in my first post on this topic, Virtual Private Networking offers ways for users to safeguard their data in public situations, when looking for privacy on their desktop computers, and when location shifting. I started my tests as a complete VPN noob. I wasn't sure what I was getting in for, or how well VPN would work with my setup. I resolved to test VPN in various situations and see how well I could still accomplish my goals. Bill Bullock of WiTopia was kind enough to sit down with me and introduce the service before I pulled out my credit card and signed up for an account. "If you're on public WiFi, you should be using VPN," Bullock told me. "It's a matter of education." I decided to test it both in the public situation, the most common VPN experience, as well as on my personal system. Don't forget to switch on the VPN My first lesson was this: using VPN must be a conscious choice. Although iOS makes VPN incredibly easy to use, it doesn't work until you switch it on. Remembering to do that while you're out must become a habit, one that I really struggled to master. When active, a VPN icon appears at the top left in your status bar. This lets you instantly check if you've enabled the service. If you see the icon below, you have. Setting up VPN The set up process was amazingly easy. I just added a new VPN entry, and entered my account credentials as instructed. (Hint: you need to add backslash W before your email.) Total set up could not have taken more than a minute. After that, my account was ready to use whenever I desired -- all it takes is a simple click to get going. What I didn't expect is that various servers provide differing performance levels, presumably based on general load. WiTopia offers dozens of servers. I found that the local Aurora-based server offered iffy response times, but by connecting to Kansas City (just a bit further east), I could obtain far more responsive Internet. Your experience will vary, of course. Because you're directing all your traffic through a server, a slow one can really limit your device's responsiveness. WiTopia offers a help article to assist with slow connections and offers 24/7 customer phone support. Bullock points out, "Another item to remember is you probably retain cookies and other identifiers to iTunes, etc. and that may have had something to do with slowed downloads. We have customers streaming Video all over the world (which is very bandwidth-intensive and finicky) , so if downloads were significantly slowed, beyond what may be normal because we're encrypting all the data, it is likely something that could be tweaked." You can location shift One feature a lot of TUAW bloggers were interested in was VPN place shifting. When you select a server, your location becomes that location. Use a Canadian server, you're in Canada. Use a UK server, you're in Britain. (Attn pedants: I checked and didn't see any for Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, etc.) What did this mean? I was able to install and use the BBC iPlayer app and sample a variety of offerings. Geolimited shows that would not normally play back on my iPad were there for the viewing. (Attn Pedants: We at TUAW do not encourage or discourage geoshifting. The BBC website states "You need to be covered by a valid TV Licence if you watch or record TV as it's being broadcast", which does not cover replays. Consult an international lawyer to determine whether you should or should not engage in this behavior.) Location shifting, as much as it delights the heart of those whose home-team basketball game is blacked out, is not without its risks and frustrations. After finishing my tests and reverting to the United States, App Store kept giving me a hard time until I completely rebooted my iPad. These kind of problems were, however, much more frequent on my Mac versus my iPad -- probably because I use my Mac in a much more rigorous way. VPN on my Mac Setting up VPN on my new Mac mini was just as easy as on my iPad and geoshifting even easier -- mostly because I didn't have to type anything once I was all set up. To change locations, I just selected a server from a menu and connected. For the most part, I tried to stay connected to Kansas City -- although I did test out London and the BBC. VPN on a desktop computer is primarily about privacy -- keeping your activities, especially your searches, anonymous. Unfortunately, I found that VPN service often interfered with the tasks I was trying to accomplish. For example, I regularly ran into Google errors like these. Google was convinced that I was some kind of automated bot trying to compromise their service. and this A search on my IP address found it blacklisted due to use by spam bots. I also ran into difficulties working with iTunes Connect (as I was rushing to get out both an update and a new app), with IRC (which often would not allow connections on irc.freenode.net), and with my email server (which I fixed using a WiTopia help page, but I couldn't send email for several days). Downloads ran slower -- especially when trying to move massive quantities of data, including the latest Xcode beta for iOS 6.1, upgrading gigabytes of apps (mostly due to TomTom's 1.3 GB update), and re-downloading movies that iTunes "helpfully" removed to the cloud. After a point, I simply turned off VPN so I could finish my downloads sometime this century. Conclusions After doing my VPN tests, I am totally behind the VPN idea -- regardless of which reputable provider is used. However, for someone who lives by bandwidth and needs reliable Internet access, I'm not entirely sure I would use it 24/7. That's not because I wouldn't want to -- having my searches protected really appeals to me -- but because at least in this configuration, my work day was impacted enough to make it more of a use-with-public-WiFi scenario. My entire VPN experience is, as you can tell, quite limited. So please join in the comments with your person reflections on providers and work flows.
VPN for the rest of us: Interview with WiTopia
VPN, aka Virtual Private Network, is a technology that lets you securely share data across public networks. For the most part, when I think VPN, I typically imagine work-related corporate or federal government accounts, or people accessing the net in countries with excessive government surveillance. But there's a lot more that VPN can do. For example, it's an essential technology for sports fans who must shift the geographic location of their IP addresses so they can watch blacked-out sports from their broadcast region. It's also popular with travelers and coffee-shop-based tech workers who regularly access shared WiFi networks. Nothing harshes your caffeine buzz like having your passwords stolen from your over-the-air traffic. Many people use VPN because it's a work requirement. Others purchase a private account for one of the four reasons here: Security. They share public WiFI hotspots and want to protect their data at cafes, airports and hotels. They'd rather not share their personal credentials with identity thieves. Censorship. They need an end-run around corporate (no playing at the office) or government censorship (think China), so they can access services and websites that they'd otherwise be cut off from. Privacy. They want to avoid oversight, tracking and other privacy infringement by websites like Google. Region Shifting. They're looking to shift locations to access georestricted resources like local blacked-out football games or Hulu from outside the US. I recently had an opportunity to sit down with Bill Bullock, CEO of WiTopia, a personal VPN services provider, to chat about the technology. WiTopia has a good reputation at TUAW and several of our bloggers are customers. Its focus is on providing privacy and security for general users rather than aiming at the total-anonymity user base. WiTopia is practically a geriatric, old-age pensioner in this field, having been founded back in 2005. Bullock told me, "Before us, VPN was really thought to be mostly a corporate and government product. We were one of the first to put out a consumer market VPN." Bullock talked to me about security issues and why home users might want to invest in a VPN account. "Our VPN works over any connection across wires or Wi-Fi." Many consumers don't consider how vulnerable shared wired connections can be, but at hotels, users will still be sharing the same network. "If someone's in another room, they may be able to sniff your traffic." People often feel more secure on a wire, but their data is just as exposed. Sniffing your data, or monitoring the traffic eminating from your computer, is a potential problem at public hotspots. "There are a number of tools available that people with little technical knowledge can use. There's one called FireSheep that works right out of the Firefox browser. It could take over a person's Facebook account, Twitter account, etc. You could hijack a session and log into those services. It's an example of a very easy to use tool that a kid could use." Bullock described a number of other attacks such as one called an "evil twin" attack, where a hacker mimics a local hotspot, encouraging unsuspecting users to connect. It's a kind of WiFi phishing you might encounter at a coffee shop or airport. "You go to see what available wireless networks there are, one might be called FREE WIFI. This is a common thing that bad guys use, where someone advertises their laptop as a WiFi network. You're actually logging on to that laptop. At airports, there are lots of people with a laptop, so they blend in. You still get Internet access because they're hooked up to let you do that but all your data is going through their computer and can be seen and captured." By using a VPN connection to encrypt the traffic from your device, it protects you against these kinds of attacks. Even if you end up moving through a dishonest WiFi broker, they can't read your data. "If you're on public WiFi, you should be using VPN," Bullock said. "It's a matter of education. People used to leave their doors unlocked, but now they don't. Does that mean someone will break in the house? We hope not but WiFi is just radio, just like a radio station. Someone with a little bit of knowledge can capture all your data. They compromise your data and can steal your identity. We don't wish to spread paranoia but it only takes one time to really mess up your life." VPN can also be valuable to those who aren't on the move. When at home or at the office, privacy is the major driver to VPN services. "When you connect to the VPN, we assign you one of our IP addresses, so there's a level of personal privacy. Even if you do a Google search, where there will still be cookies, it gives you a level of personal privacy." Bullock explained that many sites track users by IP addresses. What's more, these addresses don't change as often as you might think they do. "Even with dynamically assigned IPs, I've kept the same Verizon IP address for over a year. If I don't have the VPN on, every search I do is tagged to this IP address and stored. "We all do searches on personally identifiable information. Most people don't want to think about it, but likely every search you have ever done in your entire life is stored on a server somewhere and mapped to a handful of IP addresses that can be identified as you. VPNs give you the ability to opt-out of this information gathering." With VPN you join a group of shared IP addresses that essentially anonymize you into a crowd. "We have thousands of addresses. It's a WiTopia address that's shared among many, many, many people. You get to be lost in the crowd; your ID is cloaked. All traces back to you stop at the Witopia gateway." Because of privacy and security, nearly everyone might consider a personal VPN account. The service works on Macs and Windows, as well as on mobile devices. "Apple has done a really good job of supporting VPN protocols. It's very easy to use on an iPhone or an iPad. You set it up once and after that just slide to ON in Settings. Two, three seconds later, you're ready to use the public WiFi hotspot at Starbucks." WiTopia's basic service costs US$50/year with unlimited data and city switching (in case you want to try out iPlayer or watch Hulu). If you don't like the service within 30 days, you can cancel for a full money-back guarantee. So, how does VPN work in real life? I'll discuss my experiences testing the service in my next post, where I go hands on with WiTopia. It wasn't all smooth going, but it gave me a lot to think about.
Good Technology debuts 'first secure browser' for enterprise Android deployments
Good Technology is touting the latest addition to its Good Mobile Access (GMA) Android software suite, a secure browser. The company's GMA offering gives corporate foot soldiers armed with a smartphone access to secure intranet resources without having to initiate a VPN session -- while simultaneously allowing IT folks to manage mobile ingress. By bringing a browser into the fold, Good's software will allow employees to access databases, resources and collaboration tools without ever having to leave the safe confines of GMA's sandbox. The software maker is targeting outfits with a bring-your-own-device policy in place (and war chests large enough to install the necessary back-end infrastructure). If you're interested in learning more, the full release awaits your review after the break.
