New GoTrusted Review On VPNPick

GoTrusted has a new review available on VPNPick.com. You can find the review through the link here or by going directly to their website at www.VPNPick.com. We're very happy to be included on the site and hope our customers (and those of you thinking about joining us!) find the review helpful.

Tor Network Attacked by Malware

Wired is reporting that the Tor network has recently come under attack this past Sunday.  Malware started popping up on multiple hosting sites over the network in the morning in something known as a 'Drive-by' hack attack.

Code was being delivered through a known Java exploit in Firefox and affects Windows users. The code would gather information on the users machine while they were connected to the Tor network.

The code was designed to grab a user's MAC address (a unique hardware identifier for the computer's network or WiFi card) and the target's Windows host name.

The Tor network uses proxies to try to provide anonymity to users. The concern is that the proxy points are run on a volunteer basis allowing anyone to run as a proxy point. This opens the network to break downs that can result in breaches of user information. This is something that full encryption running on the GoTrusted VPN service is not open to as all our VPN servers are secured, both physically and via encryption.

Tips For Protecting Data While Traveling

 

A recent article posted by Information Week from Eset has outlined a few strong tips for keeping your data secure while traveling.

The article was made in response to the FBI/IC3 warning to travelers regarding use of hotel Internet systems.

This is an excerpt from the IC3 warning.

"Recent analysis from the FBI and other government agencies demonstrates that malicious actors are targeting travelers abroad through pop-up windows while establishing an Internet connection in their hotel rooms."

The FBI recommends that all government, private industry, and academic personnel who travel abroad take extra caution before updating software products on their hotel Internet connection. Checking the author or digital certificate of any prompted update to see if it corresponds to the software vendor may reveal an attempted attack. The FBI also recommends that travelers perform software updates on laptops immediately before traveling, and that they download software updates directly from the software vendor’s Web site if updates are necessary while abroad.

Tips include: making sure your software is up to date prior to travel, backing up sensitive data on a encrypted external drive, and making sure you have password protection and inactivity timeouts engaged on all devices.

One of the tips mentioned is to use a VPN service when connecting to the hotel's Internet, something GoTrusted has always emphasized to its customers traveling abroad or simply to the local coffee shop. Using our secure tunnel while going through a connection that may or may not have your best interests in mind or simply lacks up-to-date security, ensures that your data remains private and secure.

Prepare For Midterms With VPN Services

From Cliff's Notes to study groups, college students have already begun preparing for midterm exams coming up this October. But before you get to the treats at Halloween, it might be wise to have a few midterm tricks up your sleeve that studying can't provide. This guide can show you how using a VPN service can increase your identity protection and your productivity through the difficult exam period.

Protect Your Projects: The modern university is a competitive place. After all, Facebook was famously created in a dorm room. If you are working on an A+ midterm presentation, chances are your classmates know something about it and are interested in having a peak at your work. And if you have worked on your college's unsecured wifi networks or studied from an off-campus hotspot, you may have given your competitors a front-row seat. With a VPN account, you can reroute all your personal web browsing data through an encrypted remote server and hide your IP address so your computer-savvy classmates can't get a behind-the-scenes look at your next great innovation.

Battle The Campus Firewall: Anyone who has ever tried to research a taboo subject like child pornography or serial killers knows that finding information can be tricky. That's because college campuses ardently protect themselves from lawsuits by ensuring that illegal material is never viewed or downloaded on their watch. The result is an over-restrictive firewall system that often blocks legitimate research sites that students need to complete classroom assignments. In order to study, research and reference certain websites on campus, students can use a VPN service. By rerouting all web search data, VPN users can circumvent university firewalls and search on campus unencumbered. It is cheaper than a mobile hotspot and more secure than any campus wifi network.

Make the more scholarly choice this midterm season by using a service that can make your studying and private browsing that much easier.

WiFi Security Tips Reports VPN Safest Surfing Tool

A report published by the LA Times this week makes a number of recommendations for how mobile tech users can protect against unwanted snooping. The most common entryway for any hacker, the report notes, is through public wifi at libraries, cafes and airports. But there are things you can do to protect yourself, from changing a few computer settings to running all your computer transmissions through a VPN service.

Secure Sockets Layer: This extra shield of security, design to encrypt sensitive data transmissions to keep others out, is too expensive for websites to have on all the time. But many of the top websites like Google, Facebook and Twitter allow you to turn these features on. For more info on how this is done, check out the article here.

Turn Off WiFi: Another setting change the report recommends is turning off your computer's wifi connection card before you leave the house. With wifi enabled, your computer will naturally search for open wifi connections along the way to the local café or library. These wifi networks may belong to homes or businesses without any type of security enabled, making your computer vulnerable to attack.

VPN Service: The most secure way to ensure private browsing is to log in using a VPN account, the report notes. Virtual Private Networks, or VPN's are remote servers that funnel all data that your computer transmits to the web to a server so it is guarded from hackers looking for info. Many of these services also hide your IP address so hackers can't tell where you are or what you are doing. The report notes that many companies allow access to a VPN, and some may require it. Interested workers should ask their IT department about protecting browsing in public spaces.

For more information, check out the full article at the link above.

Don't Get Spooked By Online Halloween Shopping

According to a report released by the National Retail Federation, not even the ghosts of recession's past can scare away Halloween's buying brilliance. After taking a dip in 2009, 2010 saw a return to full-fledged spooky spending, with shoppers plunking down $1.8 billion on candy, $1.6 billion on decorations and another $1.8 billion on costumes, both for their children and themselves. While Halloween is fast becoming a holiday favorite, online shopping for your favorite scary gags without identity protection could leave you in very real terror.

Busy online shopping days like Cyber Monday (the newly-minted web-based answer to America's busiest shopping day, Black Friday) attract online scammers, hackers and snoops looking to catch your credit card number or other online information over non-encrypted wi-fi networks. If you are buying candy, costumes or decorations on a non-protected network without the protection of a VPN account, you may be broadcasting your personal shopping info to every prying eye within a one-block radius.

Just like your favorite Halloween mask, VPN services hide your IP address and other pertinent details so you can browse in private. Behind this mask, all your web information is transmitted through a remote server so that it isn't open to the average person looking in, no matter what security is available on your network.

While most online shopping portals and e-commerce sites are encrypted for safe shopping, some can be easily manipulated. And with many scammers using phony e-mails to steal personal information, busy shoppers getting e-mails from Halloween retailers are at increased risk for identity theft and hacking. But with dummy e-mail addresses and other security measures, VPN customers are better protected, behind a scary mask of security.

Don't get spooked by online Halloween shopping this year. Just get a better mask and scare the snoopers right back.

VPN Services Find Censored Customers Abroad

While VPN services work wonders for businesses looking to protect proprietary information and college students working at coffeeshops, a VPN account protects more than just a few profit-loss statements or a class schedule. In some countries, it is the only shield you have against government scrutiny.

For years, oppressive governments in countries across the world have sought to control the flood of information to its citizens. But with the Internet's global reach, never has the want for informational freedom been greater. Recent demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt, Lybia and Syria were convened using the Internet and social media. But with governments cracking down and seeking out activists online, the need to hide your IP address has never been greater. The web publication TheNextWeb.com reported that, in interviews with protestors, they claimed VPN's were a way of life now. One Bahraini activist, known on Twitter only as Abu Ahmed, said he takes many precautions like not tweeting until he is a safe distance from an event and obscuring faces in all photographs.

“It makes it harder to authorities to track small events and harder to identify me,” Ahmed said of his private browsing techniques. "Activists should also cover their online trail, use a program to hide your IP address and encrypt the data transferred."

In the September issue of the Atlantic, reporter James Fallows shows how the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria have put a scare into the Chinese government. A mildly oppressive government firewall called the Golden Shield has kept the flow of information out of China for years. But the government has turned a blind eye to businesses, students and other web warriors using proxy sites and VPN's.

Fear from these other nation uprisings has led to shake-ups in VPN usage, with customers still looking to circumvent the firewall and browse in private, but the government attempts to block these VPN channels. Now, VPN service providers are in private communications with customers, working to keep these channels running. The Atlantic believes the shake-up was simply a method to reassert power. But many VPN companies have vowed to keep improving services to nations like China, where private browsing is a luxury many are not afforded.

Take Our VPN Services To School

As summer begins its slow descent into fall, college students get ready to head back into the world of academia for yet another semester. But while pens and calculators may be on the school supply list for the college bookstore, few students will come to school with a dedicated VPN service in tow. But while VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, may be known only to Computer Science majors, they can be invaluable to students across modern college campuses. Here are just a few ways a VPN account can improve your on-campus browsing experience.

Circumvent The Campus Firewall: Picture this: it is the night before your midterm report is due. You try to access a website looking for some additional context for a closing paragraph when you receive a big, blinking stop sign. For whatever reason, campus firewalls can impede your online research. Pages become blocked and harm your ability to research unfettered. VPN services can allow all of your transmitted information to go through a private server, circumventing campus website blockers. So your laptop can still access campus wi-fi without fearing the firewall.

E-mail With Confidence: Any large institution with unsecured wi-fi and large numbers of people can easily become the target of e-mail scams. Hackers have created fake Facebook accounts, fake CNN pages and several other links passed around in e-mails that, if clicked on, allow hackers access to important data that can be used against you. VPN services allow you to hide your IP address, create a dummy e-mail account and increase your identity protection against e-mail scams that, sadly, have become commonplace on college campuses.

Protect Your Proprietary Information: If the story of Facebook has taught us anything, its that college campuses are hotbeds of innovation and invention. Your business school presentation or marketing concept could have real-world potential. The last thing you want to do is risk your Fortune 500 future on an unsecured, public wi-fi network. VPN services ensure that you are browsing in private, so you are not giving away your best ideas to everyone in the student union.

Protecting Your Proprietary Info When You Are Swimming With Sharks

Thousands of tech start-ups will attend conferences this year. From the TED Talks in California to BarCamp events around the country, technology entrepreneurship conferences help new tech-based start-ups get access to the investors, innovators and like-minded souls needed to get a burgeoning company off the ground. But while conferences are home to some of the best technology minds on the planet, it is also home to unsecured Wi-Fi networks, making it impossible to browse in private.

Internet security may not matter much to the average tourist trying to check their Facebook status, but to entrepreneurs sharing proprietary information about the hottest new technology idea, private browsing can mean the difference between your success and the success of the entrepreneur down the hall.

Don't take that chance. With VPN services from GoTrusted, you can protect your proprietary information on unsecured networks, allowing you to use Wi-Fi across the conference floor, in the event halls and during keynote addresses and panel discussions, without risking your precious company info. It is like entering a shark tank in a cage. You can see them but they can't see you.

Imagine being able to transmit information, e-mail private files to potential investors and update your website all while hiding your IP address and not risking your information to the other entrepreneurs around you.

While technology conferences may find you the investment and interest you need to make it big, it could also find you in a world of trouble if your private information is infiltrated. Don't let the sharks take a bite out of your big idea.

Cloud Computing Makes Private Browsing Services Even More Necessary

In today's high-tech world, cloud technology allows you to access information almost anywhere. However, if you haven't heard of private browsing, then you may be vulnerable to hackers and identity thieves.

With cloud computing becoming more and more popular, people have access to a great deal of information from multiple devices, using applications as opposed to software. As the ease of using these tools increases, so do the instances of information theft. When you log onto the Internet from a public location like a hotel or a café, your information is broadcast and is easy to find for someone with the knowledge to find it. VPN (Virtual Private Networking) will hide your IP address and encrypt traffic to protect your information.

Private browsing services allow a user to access information anywhere without letting anyone within a one mile radius know all of their private information. These systems also allow a user to access the web safely using multiple devices. Think of all the places that you use your cell phone. Imagine doing work on your laptop at a business conference or accessing the Internet through your tablet and finding out the hard way that someone stole your passwords and email information and now has access to your bank account.

Cloud technology is incredibly portable and convenient, and the more people that are aware of what they are transmitting while using it, the easier it will be to stop hackers. A private browsing system is a simple and easy way to use public Internet stress free.

VPN Service for Smartphones

When smartphones were first introduced, consumers loved the idea of being able to connect to the Internet from anywhere. These advanced cellular devices are like handheld computers that allow users to check their email, surf the web, and perform other functions that were only possible through a personal computer. It is important for users to protect the information they store and transmit on their smartphones with a VPN service the same way they do on their PCs.

Because so many of us use smartphones for our personal and professional lives, it is important to learn the dangers of connecting to the Internet in public places. When people use local networks – whether in a coffee shop, an airport, or any other place with an unsecured network – they are at risk for identity theft by hackers up to a mile around them. Banking information, emails, social networking information, and passwords are all being broadcast through these Internet connections unless users protect themselves with a VPN service. Smarphones have now reached the level of mini laptop computers, holding and transmitting all sorts of identity and sensitive information, and they should be protected as you would a laptop. Out of the need for convenience, your smartphone can sometimes automatically use the nearest public WiFi link for 'higher speed' if it has a similar name to a previously connected hotspot, but this almost guarantees sensitive information leakage... is anyone listening?

Smartphones are incredibly convenient, except when they are the cause of identity theft. Victims have to change their banking and credit card information, worry about what information has been hijacked, and spend countless hours recovering any financial losses as a result of the fraud. The only way to use one of these cellular devices in confidence and with peace of mind is by using a reliable VPN service. They hide your IP to make sure that all sensitive information is kept private no matter where or when you are accessing the Internet.