proXPN Official Blog

We’ve  lifted our temporary block on BitTorrent traffic.  Premium Account holders can now utilize U.S. servers (and all other servers worldwide) for torrenting.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — According to a new report by Declan McCallaugh at CNET, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations is now lobbying top technology providers and social networks to allow for more direct access to user information and communications through sanctioned backdoors.

U.S. government officials, specifically in the field of counterterrorism, cite the need to keep pace with current technological trends in order to effectively monitor communications that are moving off of otherwise traditional mediums.  While phone calls and even emails are subject to government wiretapping under CALEA (the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act), popular platforms such as Facebook and Skype have no legal precedence.  Authorities view access to these properties as imperative to U.S. national security, as terrorist elements could theoretically utilize their internal messaging features to coordinate and conduct operations both inside the United States and abroad undetected.

Kevin Cook, President & CEO of proXPN: “Not that this is the first that we’re hearing of it, but the fact that the U.S. has a National Electronic Surveillance Strategy should trouble any U.S. citizen reading this article.  Though no one is arguing against the mandate of government to keep its people safe, some would argue that this safety should be assured ‘at any cost.’  We need to be careful how much latitude we give our elected officials in making our information accessible for the benefit of the special interests or policy camps they represent.  At the end of the day, this isn’t about foiling terrorism plots – that’s simply the song and dance.  This is about using the specter of terrorism to fast-track legislative amendments that give unquantifiable powers to various law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies relating to our online communications.”

Much has been made of CISPA (the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) in the press as of late, resulting in a public outcry that has all but derailed the bill’s passage.  Though the Obama administration has stated its intent to veto CISPA should it pass the Senate, CALEA is already law. Passed in 1994, the original intent of CALEA is to require telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment to modify and design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure that they have built-in surveillance capabilities. This gives U.S. law enforcement easy access to all information being transmitted and logged over these mediums.  The Justice Department is now considering an amendment to CALEA that would require these same surveillance capabilities – or backdoors – to be added to and built into everything from Facebook and Twitter to Skype and Xbox Live.

“proXPN’s ultimate goal is to elevate public discourse around online privacy, be it in the United States or elsewhere.  CISPA has received the intense media scrutiny it should, but existing legislation can often be amended quickly and quietly.  Should an amendment to CALEA pass, our privacy will be hard to reclaim.  Laws never get thrown out; language is only added, implicitly meaning more room for interpretation.  Anyone familiar with Washington will immediately recognize the perils of allowing its inhabitants to interpret anything.  It’s our job as technology providers, enthusiasts, and end-users to get the word out” says Cook.

For more information on proXPN and online security, please visit: http://www.proxpn.com.

About proXPN

Since 2009, proXPN has secured the internet connections of more than 1 million people worldwide on both desktop and mobile devices.  Using industry-leading 512-bit encryption, proXPN prevents governments, hackers, and even internet service providers from monitoring, intercepting, or logging its user’s online activity.  proXPN is offered completely free with basic functionality or for a low monthly fee inclusive of a more robust feature set.

In the wake  of the failure of SOPA and PIPA, the US Congress hasn’t given up their quest to invade the privacy of all online users.  CISPA (Cyber-Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act), the  proposed legislation wending it’s way through the US Congress, is really just  SOPA and PIPA by another name.   Beware any government legislation labeled with the word “Protect” in it – this just means you’re about to get your privacy invaded without just cause or due process.

Congress couldn’t get enough votes or people agreeing with them when going after IP (intellectual property) violators, so they’re taking what’s essentially the same bill and renaming it with a title designed to dupe the people into agreeing with it.

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and not an American citizen, expressed opposition to the bill stating, “[It] is threatening the rights of people in America, and effectively rights everywhere, because what happens in America tends to affect people all over the world. Even though the SOPA and PIPA acts were stopped by huge public outcry, it’s staggering how quickly the US government has come back with a new, different, threat to the rights of its citizens.”

Spot on, Tim! We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Users the world over are beginning to realize that protecting their own privacy is increasingly their own responsibility. Proactive tools like VPN are becoming necessary to keeping private information away from prying eyes, whether those eyes are attached to thieves or governments.

proXPN Maintenance announcement -

Our UK location will be offline for up to one hour during data center maintenance starting at 12:00 noon EST (GMT -4) today, 04 April 2012

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the new legislation coming up for a vote in Congress in late January, is nothing short of a ham-handed attempt at removing citizens basic rights to privacy. In short, the government will be given the power to muzzle (i.e., sieze) any website domain that it sees fit, without due process, under the guise of protecting the rights of copyright holders. The law is written so broadly (e.g., poorly) that just about **any** website could be construed as being in violation of a copyright. It will be trivial for the government to shut down any website on the internet simply by forcing registrars to remove the DNS entries for it. proXPN urges all US Citizens who find this bill an affrontery to their basic civil liberties to join the ranks of those who oppose SOPA and voice their concerns to their representatives in Washington. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has provided a simple way for US citiznes to contact their representative for just this purpose.

proXPN is proud to announce the release of it’s latest client for Mac OS X, v2.3.1.

We are dedicated to our mission of continually safeguarding proXPN users’ privacy, and this new client for Mac OS X adds VPN Guard technology in support of this mission. VPN Guard is an optional feature which allows users to define applications that will be terminated in the event the VPN connection drops unexpectedly.

VPN Guard is available to proXPN Premium users – if you’re not yet a proXPN Premium user, either signup for a new account or upgrade today (existing users) to get VPN Guard.

If you’re not really sure if VPN is for you, you may want to think again.

As outlined in a recent Forbes article , WikiLeaks posted the “Spy Files” – which contain, among other items, alarming videos detailing how hackers can gain all of your login info to webmail, facebook, twitter, etc simply by connecting to the same wi-fi connection as the one  you’re currently using.

Using a VPN while on a Wi-Fi connection (really, when accessing any sensitive info) is a must.

You can download proXPN right now and secure your connection instantneously.

We get a lot of users in certain countries saying that they even though they are connected to proXPN, they still cannot access certain sites like Facebook, YouTube, etc. This problem stems from the fact that their ISP is very likely blocking these sites via  DNS cache poisoning techniques.

Simply put, DNS cache poisoning is where the ISP binds the wrong IP to the domain name of the blocked site on their (the ISP’s) DNS servers.

Editing your local hosts file can be an effective workaround to this problem.

To edit your hosts file, use a plain text editor – and we can’t stress this enough, so we’ll say it again – a plain text editor. Rich text editors like wordpad and word will render your hosts file unusable to your operating system. So for windows users, stick with notepad. For mac users, TextWrangler is a great, free plain text editor.

When editing your hosts file, the important thing to remember is, “IP address, tab key, domain name” – that is put the IP address on the line first, then hit the tab key, then put the domain name, like so:

111.222.111.222 somedomain.com
111.222.111.222 www.somedomain.com

Then save the file and flush your local DNS cache*

Note that for the above, there are two entries for the same domain – one with www. and one without.  This is because as far as DNS goes, these are not the same domain name (or “zone”, in geek-babblespeak).

Important points to remember

• To find the genuine IP of a site that’s blocked, Zone Edit has a great tool.
• If you’re on windows Vista or Windows 7, you’ll want to start notepad “As Administrator” – this will ensure that your changes are saved to the hosts file.
• To locate the file on windows, be sure to have “View hidden files and folders” enabled, then navigate to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc

* On windows, flush the DNS cache by opening a command prompt and typing: ipconfig /flushdns
* On mac, flush the DNS cache by opening a terminal window and typing: dscacheutil -flushcache