Net neutrality repeal – what it means and what to do when the world seams to be going backwards

Posted on by Anca Dinculescu

 

Net neutrality broadly means that all content available on the internet should be equally accessible, it’s a philosophy that puts big ideas and big money on equal grounds- preventing providers like Comcast and Verizon to block some data while prioritizing others. In other words big companies shouldn’t be blocking users from accessing services like Netflix in an effort to sell their own cable package or for the purpose of making users buy a streaming video service bundle sold by your ISP.

 

In more elevated terms, net neutrality is a principle against discrimination by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment or method of communication. Enforced through government mandate under the Obama era, net neutrality found itself on shaky grounds at the very start of Trump’s presidency, when Ajit Pai, a Republican member of the U.S. FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and longtime opposer of net neutrality regulation, was picked to head the agency.

As found on a simple search on Wikipedia “a widely example of a violation of net neutrality principles was the Internet service provider Comcast’s secret slowing (“throttling”) of uploads from peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) applications by using forged packets.

In another minor example, The Madison River Communications company was fined US$15,000 by the FCC, in 2004, for restricting their customers’ access to Vonage, which was rivaling their own services.  AT&T was also caught limiting access to FaceTime, so only those users who paid for AT&T’s new shared data plans could access the application. In July 2017, Verizon Wireless was accused of throttling after users noticed that videos played on Netflix and YouTube were slower than usual”

 

.gif Credit: thehackernews.com 

 

The repeal of the Obama era net neutrality rules have sparked movements of protest like last year’s “Day of action” or “Red Alert” a similar campaign which was enabled earlier this month. Big names like Google, Amazon, Facebook and many others are invested in the fight against blocking, throttling and discriminating against lawful content. What they support is a cause that has discrimination and ultimately innovation at stake. Advocates of net neutrality argue in the favor of keeping an unobstructed online field as a vital part of innovation. Their concern is very valid and should be a cause worth fighting for all of us. Otherwise, if broadband providers start picking favorites, new technology might never see the light of day. To understand that assertion, imagine you had your ISP blocking or limiting access to video streaming when services like Youtube came to shape, 18 years ago. Had that been the case, Youtube might not even exist today or would only be accessible upon paying extra fees to your ISP. A very unpleasant prospect, we agree.

 

Photo Credit: dreamhost.com

WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT?
Setting yourself up with a reliable, robust VPN service is a real solution to overturn the effects of net neutrality repeal.

Under the new FCC regulation, an ISP has the liberty of charging you more if you watched Netflix instead of Hulu, creating “fast lanes” and unfair advantages to preferred partners. Don’t think your ISP would do that if given the chance? Well, it’s already happened as stated before, since 2004, coming up to AT&T’s Facetime ban and again in 2014 and 2017 when Verizon slowed down Netflix traffic.

 

While California’s S.B. 822 is becoming the poster child for states looking to keep net neutrality in place by voting its own rules, not all states have the luxury to do so.

 

To make matters even worse, you can expect your ISP to sell your data to 3rd parties. An inglorious attempt to block online privacy regulations to go into effect was made in April this year by the US Senate and House decision. Rules proposed by the Federal Communications Commission or FCC to ask for permission before selling your browsing data, even though passed in October of last year, under the Obama administration, had not yet gone into effect. Data collection and data selling is nothing new under the sun for your ISP, so continuing business as usual, selling your data to the highest bidder without bothering to ask you first, is a real privilege your ISP might be abusing. One very particular privilege that sounds more like stepping on one of our most fundamental rights: the right to privacy.

 

All in all there is no doubt that the online environment is becoming increasingly politicized and the concept of a open but safe internet is in the midst of powerful forces of antagonistic interests fighting each other. A balance between these forces is a desiderate for a healthy environment that we’re not sure how or when we’re going to achieve.

 

In the meantime, people are turning to VPNs to preserve access and to reclaim online freedom and privacy and we strongly advice that you should do the same.

 

No longer an exotic tool,VPNs are now entering the mainstream and given the context it’s easy to understand why.

Simply put, when you’re using aVPN, all your data travels through a tunnel encrypted from end to end. In other words, your ISP will not be able to block access or make sense of your data, since you’ll have all your online data happen elsewhere, not going through your ISP servers and encrypted all the while.

 

But it’s not just your ISP that keeps track of your browsing data, it’s your cell phone provider too, most apps, operating systems, and other services do the same.

Smartphones with preinstalled tracking software, secretly bundled with tracking files are sold everyday, while some companies try to leverage the very problem they created by charging extra for privacy.

 

Having aVPNs in place is the smart approach to getting around all this. Think at aVPN as the middleman between you and the internet, where your ISP can only see a bunch of encrypted traffic. And since yourVPN knows as much as your ISP would, it’s very important to choose a reliable one with a zero log policy and a strong encryption.

 

Services like MyIP.io  will offer you a self-managed VPN network platform, delivering fast, secure and reliable VPN service , The platform caters to a wide demographic through three channeled directions:Personal, Dedicated and Business, so it makes for a wonderful choice for corporate or personal use at the same time.

Engineered as a global platform, MyIP.io is a VPN service provider committed to developing applications and services that preserve an open and secure Internet experience while respecting user privacy.

 

The repeal of net neutrality rules is expected to go into effect as of June 11.

Photo Credit: illustration by Guillaume Kurkdjian, “Should we dismantle Google?”

 

 

 

Beyond the politics of the Facebook scandal, Trumpism and the billion dollar pixel empire of Silicon Valley. 5 ways to secure your account now.

Posted on by Anca Dinculescu

Online data privacy has never been more present on the public agenda than in the past few months, when news about Facebook data misuse broke as the Cambridge Analytica scandal unfolded. Whether the scandal is purely political, having the can-not-be-ignored Trumpian element attached to it, or the billion dollar pixel empire of Silicon Valley ( as Wired describes it), there is a certain collateral that goes much deeper than politics or the Valley. And that collateral element is how easy we ourselves give away personal data in our idealized, highly curated virtual identities we create. Before pointing the finger at anyone, perhaps we should take a moment and think about what any public post or action we take inside a social media platform implies and the consequences that every such action can have on the digital environment, when done collectively.

Stepping aside from the Facebook scapegoat, since we all know it’s not just Facebook that allows public data collection, but many more, let’s think about the positives in the wake of recent events. What is it that we can draw from the precedent and what can we do to ensure that we are taking our data security into our own hands.

As data security enthusiasts, we take online privacy seriously and like to focus on what we can do to create a safe haven for ourselves when online. In the following, we compiled a few things that you can do right now to secure your Facebook account. Some of the features we are going to tell you about were already there before the scandal erupted and some were added as a result of the event (et voila!)

1.Check if your information has been shared with Cambridge Analytica

First things first, you can actually check wether your account was affected during the Cambridge Analytica data collection or not here. Hopefully you will get a message like this one:

2.Manage your privacy settings

Find it in the Privacy Settings and Tools page. Here you can chose if you want to make your profile information, including your friend list, phone number, photos, posts, etc) visible only to your friends or to everyone. You can also hide your entire profile from search engines.

3.Manage Ad Preferences

Since you don’t have the option to avoid ads completely, you can make changes that would enable the network to serve you better. You can learn everything about what options you have in the Ad Preferences section

4.Remove apps you no longer use

In the App Settings page (that you can access by going to the Settings menu and then by clicking Apps), you can check what data you are providing to apps and remove the data you no longer want to share or simply delete the apps you no longer use altogether

5.Soon to be implemented: Access your information data management feature

Facebook is rolling out a new feature over the next weeks hat will allow users to have more control over their profile and timeline information, such as old posts, tags, searches, likes, comments, etc. here’s a sneak peak of how the page will look like.

6.For more security while online 
make sure you set yourself up with a VPN and browse the internet uncharted.

Adding an extra hop to the route between your PC and sites like Facebook, your location data, for example, can be easily camouflaged.

Across the world, businesses use VPNs to connect to remote data centers, or for employees to connect remotely to the physical network of their workplace, while individuals can use VPNs to get access to network resources when they’re not physically on the same LAN (local area network), or as a method for securing and encrypting their information from the potential liabilities that lie ahead once exposed to unsecured networks such as public WiFis or hotspots.

MyIP.io is a self-managed VPN network platform, delivering fast, secure and reliable VPN service , designed with the professional focus in mind. Our platform caters to a wide demographic through three channeled directions:Personal,Dedicated and Business, so it makes for a wonderful choice for corporate or personal use at the same time.

Engineered as a global platform,MyIP.io is a VPN service provider committed to developing applications and services that preserve an open and secure Internet experience while respecting user privacy.

“MyIP.io is the result of the craftsmanship of our engineers, with many years of experience supporting large-scale, custom deployments for businesses , telecommunications companies, multi-service operators and enterprises.” Dave Wilson, CEO My IP.io

Resist falling for the free VPNs, hazards lie in fine print

Posted on by Anca Dinculescu

Photo Credit: digital photography by Juan Antonio Zamarripa

“There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Popularized by Milton Friedman back ’75 the phrase “There is no such thing as a free lunch remains of great economic relevance today in describing things like “opportunity costs”.

However enticing, free VPNS are more often than not the origin of many security hazards and in some cases data collection machines, hence defeating the purpose of what a Virtual private network should be.

“When the product is free. You are the product”

Credits: Xiaolin Zeng

A VPN service  implies having servers in various countries, so the maintenance or renting costs can amount a few figures, depending on volume.

While most legit businesses will offer 7 days of free trial, a free connection on a indefinite period of time is sure to get its profit elsewhere; in ways that may harm your security and defeat the whole purpose of having a VPN in the first place.

Even more compelling evidence on the security risks one might face when exposed to a FREE vpn surface once you start doing research. Take the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) the federal government agency for scientific research of Australia. In a study performed a few years ago, they analyzed no less than 283 VPN services only to find that 75% of the free ones contained tracking possibilities. You can read the entire CSIRO white paper here.

We list the most common of these corrupt practices that some VPN providers have been revealed to apply, while others admit as comme d’habitude use  in their lawyer-eese terms of service or in very fine print. 

SELLING USERS BANDWIDTH

 

using their users as servers by converting them into a botnet, some VPN providers appropriate their user bandwidth as their own and are resellling it through third parties or sister companies.
In other words, by searching a bargain you can be faced with two main issues:
1. Slower computer and internet connection: as you’re sharing your bandwidth and processor with others;

2. Higher Security Risks: assuming responsibility for what other users do online, that can be tracked down back to your IP.

INTERNET USE DATA COLLECTION

 

In depth analytics of your use data can be sold to third parties companies also. In this case, your FREE VPN becomes a data collection machine that can use your browsing history and online habits to target you with spam, ads and may even compromise your banking accounts or hold your personal data for ransom. Choosing a VPN provider, like My IP.io, that goes on a “no log kept” policies is the best approach to the matter.
ADS
modifying the web code to show ads is a common practice for “free” VPN services.

CSIRO identified FREE vpn apps “actively injecting JavaScript codes using frames for advertising and tracking purposes, while the static analysis of source code revealed apps that actively use up to 5 different third party tracking libraries.”

TRACKING LIBRARIES

The same study examined through ApkTool “the presence of embedded third party libraries (in the form of external hat files) for analytics, tracking or advertising purposes in the source code of free android apps. […] Since most VPN apps intend to provide online anonymity, the lower presence of tracking libraries is actually meaningful. However, we identified the presence of at least one tracking library in 75% of the FREE VPN apps claiming to protect user’s privacy.

POOR ENCRYPTION OR LACK THERE OF

 

The CSIRO research revealed worrisome aspects regarding encryption: “18% of the VPN apps implement tunneling protocols without encryption despite promising online anonymity and security to their users. In fact approximately 84% and 66% of the analyzed VPN apps do not tunnel IPv6 and DNS traffic through the tunnel interface respectively due to lack of IPv6 support, misconfigurations or developer-induced errors. Both the lack of strong encryption and traffic leakage can ease online tracking activities  and by surveillance agencies.”
MALWARE 

38% of the analyzed VPN apps by CSIRO  have at least one positive malware report according to VirusTotaagencies.”

The Paid vs. The FREE VPN Issue

 

A good VPN will have its own servers and encryption protocols designed for it, reducing possible security failures to a minimum. Free VPN servicesare often an open door to malware and can be easily used by scammers.
In the FREE vs. PAID matter, its is important to understand that most legit businesses will offer 7 days of free trial, but a free connection on a indefinite period of time is sure to get its profit elsewhere; in ways that can harm your security and defeat the whole purpose of having a VPN in the first place.
We suggest you do yourself a favor and invest a good 5 bucks for a reliable VPN like the dedicated VPN you can get from My IP.io or from another reliable provider.
As a general rule, mundane but so incredibly important, reading the company’s Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy, before buying a vpn service is a thing you should really consider. Ideally, these documents are in plain English and not lawyer-eese