GuizmOVPN is an OpenVPN GUI for the iPhone, it has designed to be easy to setup, configure and run, a background daemon runs the tunnel. GuizmOVPN is a premium paid for applet and it includes a 7 day trial period.
Unfortunately this applet can not be found at the official App Store and it requires a jailbroken iPhone, the reason why it can be found at the App Store is that GuizmOVPN needs to use a background process to keep the VPN tunnel active when the GUI (Graphical User Interface) is closed as well as running external commands to modify the network configuration.
GuizmoOVPN iPhone VPN applet
Note: Jailbreaking your iPhone is not condoned by Apple and it will invalidate your iPhone warranty.
After installing the location tracking software it will automatically start whenever you boot your computer. In some cases when someone attempts to steal your laptop either the power cord or a USB flash drive will get disconnected from the laptop and this will trigger a loud siren. The alarm can only be stopped when you unlock the laptop by entering your password, you can normally configure the alarm sound and include a recorded voice with a theft warning.
Other anti mobile device theft software does not have an alarm and it will attempt to connect to the Internet and send out its location to a central server together with screenshots instead, the software will have learn the laptop location by using GPS if present or the IP the laptop is using, with these details the police should be able to get a search warrant for that location.
Whatever solution you choose to protect your computer from theft, remember that this is a last resort solution, security is comprised of a multi layered approach, you should not rely on location tracking software to protect your data, use it in conjunction with physical security and encryption.
Software to protect your laptop computer from theft
LAlarm: This free laptop antitheft software is free for personal use and only requires to buy a license for business use, LAlarm consist of five alarms: theft alarm, perimeter alarm, inattention alarm, disk alarm and battery alarm, users should be careful with the file destruction feature in case they accidentally trip the alarm as it will automatically destroy selected files after the configured conditions are met.
When the laptop is disconnected from the power outlet or removed from the table, LAlarm will emit your chosen loud alarm sound, you can download voice warnings to be played from LAlarm developer website.
LAlarm free laptop antitheft software
LoJack: Paid software able to locate a stolen laptop, lock your computer issuing a remote command with an optional customized message that will show on the screen for the person who has it, erasing the whole hard drive or selected files the next time the laptop connects to the monitoring centre and if you are certain that the laptop has been stolen LoJack will log everything needed to share that information with local law enforcement allowing them to locate the home where the computer IP came from.
LoJack antitheft laptop software
Prey: Open source antitheft software for PC, MAC, Linux and mobile phones. If you computer is stolen this laptop computer security software will use the nearest WiFi hotspot to triangulate its location, take a picture of the thief with your laptop’s webcam and lock down your PC.
This free laptop protection software is free but it has a premium plan with extra features for more demanding users and business use.
Prey laptop antitheft software
LockItTight: Free laptop protection software that can be installed in any computer or mobile device to track its location in case of theft, it can take screen captures using the mobile device webcam and log the keystrokes (in development), all of this data is sent to a central server.
Like all the other antitheft laptop software on this list, LockItTight survives on the fremium model, where they offer a premium version of their services with more features next to their free version.
You could use Truecrypt traveller mode to encrypt your data on a USB stick but in order to use Truecrypt on a computer you will need administration rights and this is not possible in public computers like Internet cafe and libraries. Rohos Mini Drive USB encryptrion doesn’t require administrative privileges to open your password protected USB thumbdrive partition on a guest PC.
Rohos Mini Drive uses on the fly encryption making sure no data is left unencrypted on the guest PC after you have finished viewing it, there is a secure virtual keyboard included to stop key-loggers capturing your password and data is encrypted using AES256 a well known secure algorithm approved by the US Department of Defense to encrypt secret information.
There is a feature called ‘Hide and Encrypt Folder’ that allows to encrypt profile folders of applications like Skype, Google Chrome and Firefox as well as regular PC folders. This feature locks applications data with a password and ciphers the content strong encryption, when your encrypted USB drive is not plugged in to PC the applications will be unable to start.
Rohos Mini Drive encrypted USB thumbdrive
This encryption software needs less than 1MB for stand alone installation and creates an encrypted .rdi file where to store your data, it includes Rohos Disk Browser to view and manage your encrypted files, this is very useful as it will help you to avoid using the guest computer Windows explorer and stop you from leaving temporary files behind.
The free version of Roho Mini Drive has a 2GB encrypted partition size limitation, you will need administration rights to preinstall Rohos Mini Drive on the USB flash drive first and after that this secure encrypted USB thumbdrive can be used anywhere without any admin privileges.
The company behind Rohos Mini Drive claims that there is no backdoor whatsoever, if you lose your password, that is it, that also means that nobody can force the company to decrypt data held in your USB thumb drive because they have no way of doing it.
AVG Mobilation: This free Android applet will identify and clean viruses, schedule antivirus scans, check Android applets for viruses before install, lock and wipe content, and locate stolen or lost mobile phones using GPS. There is also a paid for version with even more features.
Android mobile phone antivirus
Kaspersky Mobile Security: In addition to protect your mobile device from viruses it can locate your lost or stolen mobile phone, protect your privacy and encrypt your files and folders. Kaspersky Mobile security can also block or wipe your mobile phone remotely if its lost or stolen.
Kaspersky Mobile Security
ESET Mobile security: This mobile phone antivirus solution combines heuristics, antispam and firewall to protect you in real time from malware handcrafted for mobile phones. ESET Mobile security is available for Windows 7 and Symbian smartphones.
ESET Windows Mobile antivirus
Norton Mobile Security: This smartphone antivirus will protect you against annoying unwanted calls and messages as well as the usual mobile device loss and theft protection. It can lock your smartphone remotely if this has been stolen and the security software itself it is light, fast and easy to use.
Norton Mobile Security
Avira Android Security: Android security suite with location tracking, remote wipe and lock, owner notification when the phone is lost, whoever fins your smartphone only has to tap a button to contact you on another number, device administration that checks the battery and gives you hardware information about your smartphone.
Avira Android security suite
NQ Mobile Antivirus: Multiplatform mobile device antivirus that works in Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices, full protection against viruses, malware and trojans. It also protects your privacy.
NetQin smartphone antivirus
LookOut Mobile Security: Multiplatform mobile antivirus for Windows Mobile, Android and Blackberry. LookOut mobile antivirus free edition will protect you against viruses, malware and spyware as well as back up your contacts, a more advanced premium edition gives you remote mobile phone locking capabilities.
LookOut Mobile Security antivirus
BullGuard Mobile Security: Complete smartphone protection against viruses, spyware and digital fraud. BullGuard Mobile Security supports most mobile phone brands and includes GPS mobile device tracking in case of losing it.
I have been using Hide My Ass VPN service for a year now, during all this time I have seen some servers come and go, mostly come, there has been a considerable increase on server locations. One thing that makes HMA premium VPN service stand out from the crowd it is their vast number of servers and IPs available.
I am based in Europe using a 10MB ADSL pipe and most of HMA VPN European, USA and Canadian servers almost match my original ISP speed, only the Singapore servers seem to be considerably slower all the time as well as having a huge ping rate (ie. lag). But your results will likely be different depending on where you live, choosing the location of your VPN as close as possible to your home considerably improves VPN speed and ping rate, if you are in Western Europe for example, and want to use a USA VPN, choosing a server on the East Coast of the US should improve performance a great deal.
The only place where I have found some of Hide My Ass USA VPNs blocked is while watching Hulu, you can easily get around this block by choosing a different US server of the many others available.
Hide My Ass company headquarters
My biggest grudge against HMA VPN it is the way they hide where their headquarters are, they don’t seem willing to reveal in what country they are based and this is pretty important because when you use a VPN three country laws must be abide for, the laws of the country where the VPN server physically is, the laws of the country where the VPN company headquarters are and your own (user) local laws.
The user local laws don’t really matter much because nobody knows where you are unless the VPN company reveals it, but the first two matter much more because it is trivial for a law enforcement agency or RIAA outlet to find that out and if HMA headquarters are located in, for example, China, then they must abide by Chinese law, it is not good enough to keep this secret. Users should be informed of where the VPN company headquarters are located.
For all that is worth, I would place my bets that Hide My Ass company headquarters are in the United Kingdom because HMA website DNS servers are using ns1.zymic.com Zymic being a hosting company that uses the tagline UK/US on its Twitter account and contains a link to HMA VPN service on its homepage footer. The Zymic domain is also registered in the UK by Netco Solutions but it appears to be a privacy registration.
The biggest give away is that HMA VPN affiliate program pays out using a British bank account, draw your own conclusions from that. I guess they must be paying their taxes somewhere.
Hide My Ass Virtual Private Network service
Hide My Ass VPN receives DMCA complaint
Various people at HMA forums have posted that Hide My Ass sends out warnings when a complaint is filled due to illegal filesharing activities, HMA as it is their legal duty, complies with the law and hands out a notice so that the copyright infringing torrent is removed. This is a good example that if necessary Hide My Ass will track you down, like any other VPN service will, at least HMA will give you a chance to remove the offending file and not terminate your account straight away.
You can still use HMA for filesharing as it is not against their terms and conditions but using a USA server for doing that is not too clever, specially since HMA has a server in Russia where filesharing of copyrighted movies does not break any local law, to be safe, make sure that whatever activity you do is legal in the server you are using so that no complaint can be filled.
If you think that you can carry out illegal activities and get away with it because you are using Hide My Ass VPN, think again, according to their privacy policy, HMA keeps connection logs for up to two years, ,more than enough time to track you down.
Many VPN services claim to not store any logs, but they will actually produce them when pressured by the authorities because all of the VPN activities get traced back to them. Using a VPN makes the job of tracking you down harder but not impossible, to make it impossible use a tor proxy.
Hide My Ass VPN service advantages
Hide My Ass has dozens of VPN servers and thousands of IP available all over the world, there is no bandwidth limit you can download as much as you like, torrents are allowed, their VPN speed is more than reasonable for the average user and it gets through geolocation based online TV blocks.
Their email support has normally replied to all my queries in around 24 hours, normally concerning servers that have stopped working, they eventually get fixed, not a big deal.
Forget about the forums for support, you will not get real tech support there, in case of problems use Hide My Ass VPN export the logs and send them via email to HMA support.
Hide My Ass VPN service disadvantages
Your IP can be exposed if your VPN connection drops and you get no clear warning whatsoever, you can be surfing the Internet with your real IP after a VPN disconnection and you will not be aware of this. There is a secure IP binding feature in HMA VPN client but it did not work for me and even if it worked that feature does not support all Internet applications.
Paying HMA VPN monthly is on the high side of prices and Hide My Ass homepage advert of a 60% discount saying “offer expires soon” is a total lie, that offer was there one year ago when I signed up for it and it is still there now, it has never gone offline at any moment, this does not say too much about HMA honesty.
I am not a big fan of Hide My Ass VPN management software either, it seems clunky to me, but you can put that down to personal taste if you like, I am not into fancy graphics, I rather have simplicity.
Conclusion Hide My Ass VPN review
Assuming you pay yearly their VPN service is great value for money, you have numerous server locations to choose from, coverage is a little scarce for Asia but that is the norm at most VPN providers, something to do with bandwidth availability and expensive server prices in that part of the planet.
HMA VPN support is fine and server reliability pretty good, with so many servers if one does not work just choose a different one, I am just not too happy the way they seem to hide where their headquarters are, I like to know where my VPN provider company is and if possible who is behind it, and I am not too enthusiastic about a yearly commitment either, which is when HMA VPN prices become affordable, that is why I am not going to renew my yearly subscription when is up, I would like to try something else and see how it goes, I am always on time to go back to HMA, it hasn’t been a bad experience, they just have a little room for improvement.
Kryptos is a premium iPhone applet to encrypt your phone calls, the company behind it is planing on launching Kryptos for Android in January 2011 and Kryptos for RIM (Blackberry) in February 2011. This encryption mobile phone applet is very easy to manage and it will provide you with sound secure voice communications for a very reasonable price, Kryptos will work over any network, including 3G, 4G and Wifi.
After the user has downloaded the Kryptos iPhone applet from iTunes on their iPhone he needs to activate the account with Kryptos. Each user receives an individual ID, calls using the Kryptos applet will be secured using peer-to-peer encryption, the initial symmetric encryption keys exchange is made using 1024-RSA and after that calls are routed with AES256 encryption.
Kryptos mobile phone call encryption
There are no backdoors in this encryption applet, your encrypted conversation cannot be decrypted by anyone other than the two parties participating on the Kryptos call session and the company does not keep any logs of the calls made, your phone applet will keep a record of call logs locally but they can be easily erased.
Note: Kryptos is not free and it requires a monthly fee.
A double authentication login system using a hardware key is the best security system for people who travel and/or use public computers at Internet cafés and libraries, there is no absolute way to secure your personal data and privacy on a computer that isn’t yours, there are too many things that can wrong in a networked computer where you do not have administrator rights, outdated antivirus software, hardware keyloggers, network password sniffers, they are all dangers that could be there and you can not effectively protect against any of them.
Using a hardware token to login into websites, together with a password, even if someone steals the passcode it will be useless for them, most passwords are stolen remotely without the user knowing about it, with a hardware authentication token you are likely to notice the pass key is missing and can then revoke it.
Swekey double factor authentication system
The Swekey is an authentication hardware token in the form of a USB thumbdrive, in order to access a web application such as webmail, Internet forum or online banking you need to have Swekey plugged in first and then enter the correct password for the service, this means that if anyone manages to steal your password they will not be able to login because they will still need to have your Swekey.
The Swekey is not a regular USB key, it generates One Time Passwords, and it can’t be hacked because the private key that is used to generate the OTP scan not be read (physical protection).
Swekey is operating system and browser independent, compatible with Windows, MacOS and Linux whether you use the Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera browsers. For other more obscure operating systems like Solaris and FreeBSD, Swekey should also work if libusb is present.
SweKey USB hardware token plugged in
When you plug in the Swekey into the USB port your user name is automatically filled in and you are automatically logged out when you unplug your hardware token.
Swekey is integrated in most popular open source projects like Drupal and Joomla, well known Content Management Systems that power community websites. Internet forums powered by vBulletin, phpBB also support it, and so do open source webmail platforms like RoundCube and Squirrel.
There are specific plugins for Swekey but it can be used with any OpenID compliant web site, the main problem with hardware authentication tokens is that they need to be supported by the website you use, OpenID already has thousands of sites behind it.
http://www.swekey.com
Update 2015: Swekey is no longer in business, link erased.
YubiKey double factor authentication system
The YubiKey will calculate a new unique passcode each time it is used making it impossible to copy and illegitimately re-use a passcode.
To use this hardware token you just plug it into a USB port and it will act like a USB keyboard compatible with Windows, MacOS and Linux. YubiKey has one button on it, that when you press it will generate a one time 44 character password.
YubiKey hardware token plugged in
In order to log into a website you must have the physical Yubikey token plugged into your machine and press the button on it to generate a new One Time Password. The generated one time password and can’t be reused or copied and pasted, this prevents malicious hacking attacks if someone captures your login credential. This hardware authentication system can also be used at OpenID websites with YubiKey support enabled.
Why use hardware authentication security
All of these three hardware security tokens are low cost and highly secure USB authentication that I would consider buying if I had to use multiple shared computers, if you only use your home computer for Internet access, having your antivirus and firewall updated daily and configured correctly together with a good online password manager should suffice enough people.
The most paranoid can add double authentication for an extra layer of security, I can see its utility for home users too, if someone hacks your favourite website database and gets your username and password out of it they will not be able to do anything with the password without the physical hardware authentication token to login.
These hardware authentication devices all have a way to revoke the key in case you lose it, none of them uses a battery which makes them highly reliable and they all use a random One Time Password to login.
I could not see any major differences between these three hardware based authentication systems, prices and security are much the same, probably the most important deciding factor when picking one of them is to make sure that the websites you normally visit have support for the specific hardware authentication token of your liking.
