One in every 6 people in UK now have a VPN

Posted 21st December, 2017 @ 12:07 pm | by Suzi Marsh | inNews

According to new research from analytics firm YouGov, a surprisingly large number of UK internet users are now using a Virtual Private Network, or VPN.

A VPN is a handy tool for anyone who wants to conceal their activity online. Put simply, it works by providing a server to act as a middle man for your internet activity.

So, when you visit websites and download information, all the data travels through a VPN server before reaching your computer, phone or tablet – and vice versa.

Because everything is encrypted, your internet activity can be kept separate from your Internet Service Provider.

And with censorship from schools, workplaces and even governments on the rise, this opportunity for privacy has been welcomed by many internet users.

VPNs in the UK

As part of their Incognito Individual report, YouGov found that a staggering 16 percent of British adults have used either a VPN or a proxy server. Similar to a VPN, a proxy works with your internet browser to conceal your location and protect your privacy.

But why are so many people keen to hide what they’re doing online?

According to YouGov, the main reason is to access sites that are normally limited to specific regions – such as accessing iPlayer abroad or watching censored content on YouTube.

Apparently, 48 percent of British VPN and proxy users cited this is their key motivation.

Additionally, some 44 percent – around four in ten users – chose to browse this way for added security, while 37 percent stated that enhanced privacy was most important.

For 24 percent of users, the ability to access sites that would usually be blocked at home or at work was their main reason for using a VPN or proxy. And for 19 percent, their main motivation was a desire to decrease spam and avoid ads.

“The number of people using VPN is significant enough to provide a headache to those services which use region-based access. Alongside ad blockers, disposable email and private browsing, a substantial percentage of people try to go undetected online.” – Nasra Aharchich, YouGov

Could this be the start of a revolution in how we approach our browsing habits?

As the concept of net neutrality grows ever more fragile, more and more users are looking to conceal their activity online – creating a new online landscape that marketers must learn to navigate afresh.

Unsafe Starbucks WiFi hijacks laptops to mine Bitcoin

Posted 15th December, 2017 @ 8:37 am | by Tom Rodgers | inNews

Something we’ve all considered might be possible has just been proven true.

Starbucks WiFi has been using the computer power of anyone that connects to help criminals mine cryptocurrency.

The scam was discovered when one coffee drinker, Noah Dinkin, tried to log in to the Starbucks WiFi and found his connection was delayed by 10 seconds.

Dinkin just happens to be the CEO of a Stensul, a New York technology firm, and posted the results of his test on Twitter.

Hi @Starbucks @StarbucksAr did you know that your in-store wifi provider in Buenos Aires forces a 10 second delay when you first connect to the wifi so it can mine bitcoin using a customer's laptop? Feels a little off-brand.. cc @GMFlickinger pic.twitter.com/VkVVdSfUtT

— Noah Dinkin (@imnoah) December 2, 2017

Starbucks has admitted that the details of the test were correct.

The coffee chain admitted that the branch, in Buenos Airies in Argentina, was secretly hijacking computers to mine the Monero cryptocurrency.

The firm’s official Twitter account replied to Durkin that the problem was with the internet provider and not with their own insecure WiFi.

It tweeted: “As soon as we were alerted of the situation in this specific store last week, we took swift action to ensure our internet provider resolved the issue and made the changes needed in order to ensure our customers could use Wi-Fi in our store safely.”

It’s not clear whether the hijack is happening across its stores worldwide but the company told news website Motherboard that it “did not have any concerns that the problem is widespread”.

Durkin responded on Twitter, saying: “Since I have been asked, a few items to clarify: a) this was observed by a friend and I in three separate Starbucks stores in Buenos Aires over multiple days following my original tweet, that week, it wasn’t just one store, c) the TOS [terms of service] said nothing about this”.

MAIN IMAGE: Viola Ng/Flickr/CC-BY-2.0

Work mobiles UK’s ‘biggest threat’ to security

Posted 11th December, 2017 @ 11:55 am | by Tom Rodgers | inNews

While few people have antivirus software or VPNs for their personal phones, new research suggests that work mobiles are the most easily exploited technology.

A blog by security researchers Lookout says the 58% of UK workers who have accessed customer or employee data on their work phones are putting their company at risk because they don’t have the right protection.

The biggest problems

• Using work phones for Facebook or to share unencrypted personal information
• An out of date OS that you’ve not updated
• Giving many apps access to your contacts – even if you don’t need to
• Accessing work docs, customer records or billing details on your phone – that isn’t protected in the same way as on a computer.

Smartphones are just as easy to hack as any computer. They are normally linked to open email accounts, social media accounts with pre-saved passwords or company documents which are not password-protected.

GDPR coming May 2018

This GDPR is basically a new law about data security passed by the European Council in 2016 and slated to come into full force by May 2018.

To give it its full title, it’s the General Data Protection Regulation.

Brexit may or may not affect whether UK companies have to comply with this law, but as of December 2017 it looks very much like UK law will be in “regulatory alignment” with the EU wherever it suits Theresa May’s government, in order to get a trade deal signed and delivered.

Leaders to lowly at risk

Whether you are simply of a cog inside a vast machine or the CEO of the company, you’re at threat of exposure.

31% of top-level executives in the US say their work mobiles have been hacked or compromised.

And 84% of IT security personnel say that personal data access on employee mobiles could put their company at risk.

The best thing to do for companies to secure their data is to invest in antivirus, backups and a VPN to use across all their devices.

See all the top VPN reviews here

MAIN IMAGE: Lookout

How to create an anonymous email account

Posted 7th December, 2017 @ 6:29 pm | by Tom Rodgers | inGuides

A VPN is a good first step towards securing your valuable personal data and blocking out scammers, spammers or fraudsters who want to exploit you.

A great way to go one step further is to set up an anonymous email account.

Perhaps you want a spam-trap email account, or you’ve got concerns about exactly how secure your personal data really is.

If your email address is ever hacked or compromised, you want to make sure that there are no personal details on that account that can be traced back to you. This will nullify any hacking, phishing or spoofing attempt.

Why go anonymous?

Everywhere you go online, you’re being tracked.

Your browser is automatically logging which websites you visit using cookies. You can turn cookies off, or browse in Incognito mode, but a lot of the time it’s not clear whether you’re really browsing anonymously.

More: Privacy is dead now the Snooper’s Charter is now law

And with the UK government passing the Investigatory Powers Act into UK law, it means the state can force ISPs to maintain and keep detailed logs on your browsing history.

There is no way to opt out – unless you use a VPN – and the data will be collected on everyone.

There are free and paid ways to create an anonymous email account.

We’ll run you through the quickest, easiest and most secure ways to do this.

Create a secondary Gmail account

A low-tech solution to sorting out your anonymous email is to sign up for a Gmail account.

You might already have a Gmail email address, but the key thing here is to not provide any of your personal details to Google when you add a new acount.

That means you can’t give Google your real birthday, name, address or mother’s maiden name.

It does mean being economical with the truth. You will have to link a second email address or phone number to this account so that you can recover it in the event that you lose you password.

So if you’re going down the Gmail route and you want to stay off the grid, then it’s worth investing in a cheap monthly SIM to get a mobile number you can use. The link takes you to our sister brand, the independent comparison website SIMOnlyDeals.co.uk.

It can be done with Gmail, but to really get the benefit of anonymous email you’ll need to sign up to a VPN and open a private window every time you send an email.

Hide My Ass VPN: No more anonymous email

As of 8 November 2017, Hide My Ass no longer offers an anonymous email account to anyone who signs up to its VPN service.

There are still plenty of guides online to creating an anonymous email address which incorrectly say HideMyAss is an option.

But Hide My Ass decommissioned this added extra, saying: “While it was useful back when it was first released, in a post-Snowden world, there’s been a rise in other, dedicated anonymous email providers that are able to do a better job than us. So we’ve stepped gracefully aside so they can do their thing, while we focus on what we do better than anyone else: improving our top-rated VPN.”

While it uses the American spelling of ‘arse’, Hide My Ass is actually based in the UK. It was one of the first commerically available VPNs when it launched in 2005.

TorGuard VPN: Our best recommendation

TorGuard is a well-regarded VPN service which allows you to set up an anonymous email address.

You can add a free or paid version when you sign up to TorGuard. Both versions come will all the same features, including:

• Secure G/PGP end-to-end email encryption
• No adverts or marketing emails or contacts
• 24/7 dedicated setup and ongoing support

However, with the free version you only get 10MB of offline storage, which will only work if you regularly delete everything in your inbox.

The paid version starts at $6.95 a month – around £5.18 in real money – if you’re paying monthly. With the paid version you get all of the features above, but with unlimited offline storage.

TorGuard is VPNs.co.uk’s recommended anonymous email provider.

MAIN IMAGE: Icantseejaquanandkyle/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0

White-hat finds serious flaw in WPA2 WiFi

Posted 4th December, 2017 @ 9:40 pm | by Tom Rodgers | inNews

It’s a truism of protecting your devices and your data to avoid connecting to insecure public WiFi and to password-protect everything up to the hilt.

But it could all be for naught according to one security researcher.

PhD student Mathy Vanhoef probed the main technology used to provide UK WiFi – WPA2 – and discovered a serious weakness.

This video demonstration posted to Youtube of his attack has already amassed nearly 900,000 views.

His slightly terrifying assessment find that if your device uses WiFi, whether that’s a phone, a tablet, a laptop or PC, it is probably vulnerable.

We’ll just repeat that. Every device. Probably vulnerable.

First of all, if you’re relying on something as potentially insecure as public Wi-Fi, you should always use protection in the form of a VPN.

A VPN will allow you to browse securely and anonymously as it disguises your true IP address from anyone illegally listening in to the network.

Vanhoef’s demonstration shows how easily he is able to bypass WPA2, a protocol that is supposed to secure all current WiFi networks.

He says: “An attacker within range of a victim can exploit these weaknesses using Key Reinstallation Attacks (KRACKs)” to read encrypted data.

The list of what’s easily available to hackers using this technique is horrifying.

Credit card numbers, passwords, instant message chats, emails, photos or any personal data on your device would be up for grabs.

The weakness is in WPA2 itself, not the way this protocol is used by specific networks, so “any correct implementation of WPA2 is likely to be affected”.

According to this list, Apple, Google, Sony and Samsung Mobile are among the companies to have already issued updates to combat the weakness, but many more vendors, including Blackberry, Ericsson, HTC and Huawei have the status ‘Unknown’.

Patches will work, says Vanhoef, and you don’t immediately need WPA3. You can carry on using WiFi but you should update all your devices to the latest software available.

Should you update your WiFi password?

While updating your WiFi password won’t prevent a KRACK attack from being successful, it’s never a bad idea.

What is really important, Vanhoef says, is to make sure all your devices are updated, and update your router’s firmware.

Go deeper

The full research paper was presented at the Computer and Communications Security conference in Dallas, Texas, on 1 November 2017.

It’s available to read at krackattacks.com.

2.7m UK Uber users exposed in data breach

Posted 4th December, 2017 @ 1:32 pm | by Suzi Marsh | inNews

According to a recent statement by taxi-hailing app Uber, the personal details of 2.7 million UK users have been compromised as the result of a security breach last year.

Back in October 2016, hackers managed to gain access to the personal details of as many as 57 million Uber users worldwide.

However, the breach – which affected both customers and drivers – was swept under the rug by Uber bosses, and remained secret until as recently as late November 2017.

In a shocking twist, it has also been revealed that disgraced Uber CEO Travis Kalanick oversaw a payment of $100,000 to the hackers guilty of committing the breach.

In return, the culprits allegedly deleted the data and cooperated in keeping details about the lapse in security from leaking to the general public.

In a statement released by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on Wednesday 29 November 2017, officials confirmed that some 2.7 million UK users had been affected, with names, mobile phone numbers and email addresses all involved in the breach.

An ongoing investigation

So just how worried should Uber users be?

“On its own this information is unlikely to pose a direct threat to citizens.

However, its use may make other scams, such as bogus emails or calls appear more credible. People should continue to be vigilant and follow the advice from the NCSC.” – James Dipple-Johnstone: Deputy Commissioner, ICO.

According to the ICO, the investigation is ongoing, and more details about the breach are expected to be released in the future. Meanwhile, they have called upon Uber to make contact with any UK users affected by the incident.

The following day, Alex Neill from UK consumer advice group Which? joined the call for more transparency from Uber – and more action by the government to protect those affected by data breaches.

“Data breaches are becoming more and more common and yet the protections for consumers are lagging behind,” he said.

“The UK government should use the Data Protection Bill to give independent bodies the power to seek collective redress on behalf of affected customers when a company has failed to take sufficient action following a data breach.”

Our advice?

Check if your private contact details have been exposed with the haveibeenpwned online tool, and consider a VPN to protect yourself in the event that – as we now know – you can’t trust companies with your personal data.

Best VPN for Hulu 2017

Posted 9th November, 2017 @ 4:08 pm | by Tom Rodgers | inGuides

Unlike Amazon Prime and Netflix, Hulu isn’t available in the UK.

The streaming service has some of the top-rated shows on TV, including hit drama weepy This is Us, The Mindy Project and dystopian nightmare The Handmaid’s Tale.

But many in the UK can’t access Hulu at all. Why? Because it is region-locked.

This means anyone outside the US trying to connect to the service is blocked from accessing shows, movies or other content.

When will Hulu be available in the UK?

On Twitter, Hulu explained to expectant viewers that they don’t yet have international streaming rights to these shows.

While expanding to the UK is “part of our long-term goals”, the company given no indication that this will start in 2018 so don’t expect it any time soon.

Hulu offers a 30-day trial, and then clicks over to a $5.99 a month subscription. Based on the exchange rate in November 2017 here in England, that’s around £4.67.

Some VPNs offer free trials so you can find out if it will do what you want it to do before signing up to a monthly amount.

You’ll probably see this error message if you try to access Hulu outside the United States.

If you want to watch shows on the Hulu network and you live in the UK, then you’re bang out of luck – that is – until you sign up to a VPN service that can bypass the Hulu block.

Now when you go online on your tablet or home computer, or download the official Hulu app to your Android or iPhone, the service should be available.

What you need from a VPN to watch Hulu

Fast enough to stream HD content

If your internet connection is being bounced around various international servers, then the connection may not be stable enough to support buffer-free video watching.
Uninterrupted 1080p is possible if you get the right VPN.

Safe and secure

Anonymity is a pleasing by-product of using a VPN. Even if someone wanted to track your internet activity, they couldn’t.

Strong encryption

Apart from hiding your true IP address and mixing your traffic with other users, the best VPNs use 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) methods so that your traffic can’t be read by third parties. This means your ISP won’t be able to see where you are and what sites you are visiting online.

Hulu knows

It’s made a little more complicated by the fact that Hulu are now aware that people are using VPNs to spoof their location and access geo-protected content.

But while they are blocking some IP addresses, you can still use a VPN to get on Hulu. Only the VPNs listed below have the resources, security, and other advantages you need to get Hulu access.

Will a free VPN let me watch Hulu?

A VPN is a costly service to provide so it will be very unlikely you’ll get exactly what you want.

VPNs add a layer of encryption to your connection that could slow down traffic in and out.

Downloads and uploads can be affected. But the best VPNs have constantly optimized networks so you won’t see any difference between using them and not using them.

Many free VPNs will restrict bandwidth so watching HD video without breaks or buffering is nigh-on impossible.

While you may get lucky with a free VPN, they usually don’t have the ability to switch away from blacklisted IP addresses, so you may only get through to your streaming service of choice for a small amount of time before it is re-blocked.

You might be forced to install other programs along with a free VPN, and if the company aren’t making any money from your paycheck, you can be sure they’ll claw back the costs in other ways.

A common complaint is that free VPNs inject ads or tracking cookies into your browser and then sell your data on to third parties.

It’s like the old saying. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Or in this case, malware.

What you need

A Hulu subscription or free trial

This is an important point. Just because you have a VPN, you don’t get Hulu for free.

Hulu comes with a 30-day trial, after which it’s $5.99 for 12 months. If you carry on after the first year, your monthly price shifts slightly upwards to $7.99 a month.

If you can’t get Hulu where you live, you’ll need to sign up using a credit card.

At one time, UK credit cards worked fine to pay for Hulu. But by late 2016, Hulu started cracking down.

One solution is that Walmart.com sell Hulu gift cards in US dollars.

You will need a five-digit US ZIP code when you sign up. This is the equivalent of a UK post code. 1990s high school drama 90210 is a popular my reference point, but you can check on the USP website to see if the five-digit number you choose is a valid ZIP code. Make a note of the city and state that ZIP code relates to, you’ll need to input this data when you sign up.

A VPN that can connect to US servers

To get the best out of Hulu with your VPN, you need to be able to connect to the internet using a US server.

Then when you go on Hulu, the computers at their end recognise your phone, tablet or computer as being located in the US.

The best VPNs will allow you to choose from a selection of servers all around the world. Then, if you want to choose to watch Hulu, you can connect to one of the US servers.

Our choice: Express VPN

• ExpressVPN scores top marks for its fast, optimized network.
• Several server locations available across the United States
• Bandwidth strong enough to stream Hulu in HD
• 30-day money back guarantee
• Customer service a high-priority: Livechat available 24/7
• Uses 256-bit encryption
• Not the cheapest but reliability, speed and security all worth paying for

UK VPNs – The Best of British Privacy
(Unless you break the law)

Posted 28th April, 2016 @ 5:12 pm | by VPNs Team | inNews

In the current climate of ever-increasing surveillance, some say UK-based VPN providers may not be able to protect your privacy effectively.
We take a look at the effect of snooping on VPN provision in the UK, and USA - can we trust our VPN's to keep us anonymous?

Read more »

Should I Be Using Tor?
Everything you need to know.

Posted 7th March, 2016 @ 9:47 pm | by VPNs Team | inGuides

Looking for ways to improve your online privacy? If so, you've probably heard of Tor. The internet is full of conflicting opinions on this free-to-use anonymity software...
So what's the truth about The Onion Router? And how does it compare to VPN protection?

Read more »

EarthVPN’s New Upgrade…
What’s the Difference?

Posted 24th February, 2016 @ 1:27 pm | by VPNs Team | inGuides

News from Earth VPN today - a brand new upgrade to their network infrastructure and software. So what's changed?
We'll get into the nitty-gritty to see how this latest release will improve EarthVPN's service and find out how you can make the most of it.

Read more »

PayPal Begin to Block VPN Payments…
What does it mean for you?

Posted 19th February, 2016 @ 2:33 pm | by VPNs Team | inNews

PayPal have stated that they will begin blocking payments to VPN providers who promote activities they don't condone - such as unblocking worldwide streaming content like netflix, or P2P file sharing. What's prompted this unwelcome move and how will it affect VPN users going forward?

Read more »

Netflix Clamping Down on VPN Users…
What’s the Truth?

Posted 12th February, 2016 @ 4:26 pm | by VPNs Team | inNews

Once again Netflix have been making noise in the news about restricting VPN access to their content. We've heard this all before of course - but what's the truth about the so-called clampdown, and what does it mean for those of us who want to use VPNs to stream geo-restricted video in the future?

Read more »