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Protect your Data during Holiday Travel

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You’re dreaming of a white Christmas, and hackers are dreaming of a green Christmas: your cash in their pockets. And hackers are everywhere, and are a particular threat to travelers.
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  • Prior to leaving for your holiday vacation, have an IT specialist install a disk encryption on your laptop if you plan on bringing it along; the hard drive will have encryption software to scramble your data if the device it lost or stolen.
  • Try to make arrangements to prevent having to use your laptop to handle sensitive data. If you must, then at least store all the data in an encrypted memory stick or disk encryption as stated above. Leave as much personal data behind when you travel.
  • Before embarking on your vacation, make sure that your devices are equipped with comprehensive security software such as antivirus, antispyware, antiphishing and a firewall so that you can have safe online connections.
  • If your device has a virtual private network (VPN), this will encrypt all of your transmissions when you use public Wi-Fi. Hackers will see gibberish and thus won’t have any interest in you. Don’t ever connect to an unprotected Wi-Fi network!
  • Always have your laptop and other devices with you, even if it’s to momentarily leave the hotel’s lobby (where you’re using your device) to get some water. When staying at friends or family, don’t leave your devices where even other guests in the house you’re staying at can get to them, even if they’re kids. Just sayin’.
  • Add another layer of protection from “visual hackers,” too. Visual hackers peer over the user’s shoulder to see what’s on their screen. If they do this enough to enough people, sooner or later they’ll catch someone with their data up on the screen.
  • Visual hackers can also use cameras and binoculars to capture what’s on your screen. All these thieves need to do is just hang nearby nonchalantly with your computer screen in full view, and wait till you enter your data. They can then snap a picture of the view.
  • This can be deterred with 3M’s ePrivacy Filter, when combined with their 3M Privacy Filter. When a visual hacker tries to see what’s on your screen it provides up to 180 degree comprehensive privacy protection. Filters provide protection by blackening the screen when viewed from the side. Furthermore, you’ll get an alert that someone is creeping up too close to you. The one place where a visual hacker can really get an “in” on your online activities is on an airplane. Do you realize how easy it would be for someone sitting behind you (especially if you both have aisle seats) to see what you’re doing?

Robert Siciliano is a Privacy Consultant to 3M discussing Identity Theft and Privacy on YouTube. Disclosures.

VPN for Online Security: Hotspot Shield

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Online users need a VPN (virtual private network), a kind of service that gives you online security, and Hotspot Shield’s service has a free version. A VPN hides your device’s IP address and interferes with any company trying to track your browsing patterns.

7WMany online companies take peoples’ data without their authorization, and then share it with other entities—again without the user’s permission. A virtual private network will put a stop to this invasion.

Thanks to the fiasco with Edward Snowden and the political messes happening in Venezuela and other parts of the world, many people are turning to VPN services like Hotspot Shield. When you surf the ‘Net on a public network (including using social media), your personal information is up for grabs in the air by vultures.

Why is VPN online security important?

Your personal data is out there literally in the air, to get mopped up by Internet entities wanting your money—or oppressive governments just wanting to snoop or even block internet access to the rest of the world. If you use your device when traveling, you’re at particular risk for suffering some kind of data breach or device infection.

The unprotected public networks of hotel, airport and coffee house Wi-Fis mean open season for crooks and snoops hunting for unprotected data transmissions. The VPN protects these transmissions of data.

In fact, Hotspot Shield was used to escape the prying of government online censors during the Arab Spring uprisings. This VPN has been downloaded hundreds and hundreds of thousands of times.

This VPN service comes with periodic pop-up ads and some banner ads for the free version, but the $30 per year version is free of ads and has malware protection.

What else does a VPN like Hotspot Shield do?

Users are protected from cookies that track where the users visit online. If your online visits are getting tracked, this information can be used against you by lawyers and insurance companies. And who knows what else could happen when tech giants out there know your every cyber move.

More on Hotspot Shield’s VPN

  • Compresses bandwidths. All the traffic on the server side, before it’s sent to the user’s device, is compressed. This way users can stretch data plans.
  • Security. All of your online sessions are encrypted: HTTPS (note the “S”) is implemented for any site you visit including banking sites. You’re protected from those non-secure Wi-Fi networks and malware.
  • Access. Think of the protection as a steel tunnel through which you access the Internet.
  • Privacy. Your IP address is masked, and so is your identity, from tracking cookies.

Hotspot Shield is compatible with iOS, Android, Mac and PC. It runs in the background once it’s installed and guards all of your applications.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield VPN. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.

10 Easy Ways to hide from spies

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Who would have ever thought that that marvelous invention, the smartphone, as well as your tablet and PC, would give you cause for concern about hiding from spies? And when I say spies I mean anyone who has a vested interest in your information whether that is governments foreign or domestic or a spouse, employer, marketer or just some freaky weirdo.

11D Today’s technological conveniences also act as portals through which the spies can gain access to your personal information. As a security analyst, I’ve come up with the following:

Easy Ways You Can Hide Your Data from the spies

  1. Use a VPN (virtual private network) such as Hotspot Shield VPN when online. This way your data traffic is encrypted—and thus difficult to detect by spies or any hackers, whether you use a phone, computer or tablet. Data transmission may still occur due to ads, but the VPN will put a stifling effect on it.
  1. Use Tor. You can hide from mass and corporate surveillance with a Tor installation—which the National Security Agency does not like—because it works.
  1. While playing games put your mobile device into airplane mode (which suspends data transmission). You don’t need to be online to play all games. Being offline means your personal data can’t be transmitted.
  1. HTTPS! Install HTTPS Everywhere, a browser plugin for Chrome, Firefox and Opera. It’s free, though currently not available for smartphones. HTTPS means security on the visited web site.
  1. Post on social media only when you’re connected with your password-protected, secure workplace or home Wi-Fi. And in some cases you may need to post via computer, not your smartphone!
  1. Hard drive encryption. A person who uses your computer or mobile will not be able to copy its data if you have an encrypted hard drive. Local storage can be encrypted on the latest versions of Windows, Macs, iOS and Android.
  1. Turn off cellular data connections. Unless you absolutely must know every single e-mail that’s coming in when you’re out and about, switch off the cellular data. Check your e-mail only when you’re on a secure network.
  1. Turn off the GPS and Wi-Fi on your mobile device. GPS, Wi-Fi and geolocation can pinpoint your location fast. Keep them off unless you need them (lost in the wilderness?). To turn off geolocation, start with your apps that take photos, then do the rest. Then you won’t have to worry about government agents finding you.
  1. Dumb down. Your phone, that is. If you’re really concerned about privacy, ditch the smartphone and use a “dumb” phone also known as a “feature phone”. Though even a simple cellphone can be used as a tracking device, it makes it hard for anyone to get your location and data since you can’t get on social media or play online games with a dumb phone.
  1. Never open e-mails with a blank subject line. Though your spacey friend may neglect to type into the subject line, a blank subject field can also mean a virus waiting to make its move. If the sender is familiar, send them a newly created message asking if they just sent you something with a blank subject line.

So there you have it: 10 ways that pretty much work to keep hidden from the spies and all other snoops.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield VPN. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.

Cellular Base Station Range Extenders Vulnerable to Attack

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Low-powered cellular base stations are often found in residential homes and small businesses where mobile coverage is scant. The device, which also known as a femtocell, connects to DSL or cable connections and extends cellular coverage to a functional level where cell towers simply don’t reach. Some cellular base stations can accommodate up to 16 devices indoors or outdoors. The benefits of deploying a cellular base station include better voice quality and stronger wireless internet connections over 3G or 4G.

A few of the mobile carriers offering cellular base stations include Vodafone, SFR, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, Verizon and Mobile TeleSystems. The devices cost under a few hundred dollars and offer a significant improvement in areas with poor wireless connections.

While all this is good and dandy, researchers discovered a flaw in the firmware of a top mobile carrier that may affect up to 30 other cell network devices.

The Register reports, “Security researchers have demonstrated a flaw in femtocells that allows them to be used for eavesdropping on cellphone, email and internet traffic. The researchers bought a femtocell for $250, and used open-source software to test out the bugging attack. They also managed to boost the range of the femtocell to enable a much wider radius of data-slurping beyond the advertised 40-meter radius. Since the firmware of femtocells is seldom updated, an attacker could eavesdrop for some time before being detected.”

Once notified of the firmware flaw, carriers are supposed to communicate with base station clients with a firmware update and instructions on how to install it. However, just like a consumer’s PC not being properly updated with antivirus or operating system-critical security patches, it is doubtful many of the devices have been updated.

If you have a cellular base station deployed in your home or office, it is advised that you contact your carrier and/or search out your cellular base station’s model number to see if there is a patch—and install it. Otherwise, anyone connecting to cellular base station should employ a virtual private network software such as Hotspot Shield VPN to encrypt wireless communications.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield VPN. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures. For Roberts FREE ebook text- SECURE Your@emailaddress -to 411247.

10 Million Mobile VPN Users Can’t Be Wrong

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A virtual private network (VPN) is a network set up to communicate privately over a public network. For example: You occasionally want to or need to work from home and your employer knows that if you do, the data that travels between your PC and an office PC needs to be protected. Another example is when you use public WiFi, knowing your wireless data can be sniffed out by criminals. Using a VPN solves that problem.

Hotspot Shield VPN service is a great option that protects your entire web surfing session, securing your connection on both your home internet network and public internet networks (both wired and wireless). Hotspot Shield’s free proxy protects your identity by ensuring that all web transactions (shopping, filling out forms, downloads, etc.) are secured through HTTPS—the protected internet protocol. Further, Hotspot Shield encrypts all mobile data, protecting the user’s identity. Finally, the mobile version of the app compresses bandwidth, allowing users to download up to twice as much content at the same cost. Since its launch in May 2012, users have saved 102.9 million MB!

While it bears noting that the 10 million downloads milestone was achieved roughly twice as fast on mobile as with the desktop product, which was first released in 2008, Hotspot Shield continues to rack up impressive numbers on non-mobile platforms too. In the past 12 months, the service has protected more than 50 billion pages.

What Hotspot Shield does:

Security: Encrypts users’ entire web sessions, turning all HTTP sites into HTTP(S) and making the entire web as secure as major banking sites—protecting users in unsecured WiFi networks and blocking malware in the cloud.

Privacy: Protects users’ identity from unwanted tracking and masks their IP addresses.

Access: Establishes a secure tunnel between a user’s computer or mobile device and the internet, allowing users to gain secure uncensored access to all internet content.

Bandwidth compression: Compresses all traffic on the server side before sending it to a user’s phone, allowing users to stretch their data plans.

Hotspot Shield is available for PC, Mac, iOS and Android. Once installed, Hotspot Shield will run in the background, protecting all applications, email and web browsing.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield VPN. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.

What’s the difference between using Proxy vs VPN?

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If you live in or travel to a country that controls what websites their citizens can and cannot visit then you might not have access to sites like Facebook or YouTube. In this case you may have considered using a proxy or a VPN.But what’s the difference?

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a network set up to communicate privately over a public network. A VPN protects your data between your laptop, iPad, iPhone or Android device and an internet gateway. It does this by creating an impenetrable, secure tunnel to prevent snoopers, hackers and ISPs from viewing your web-browsing activities, instant messages, downloads, credit card information or anything else you send over the network.

A proxy server (sometimes called a web proxy) generally attempts to anonymize web surfing. There are different varieties of anonymizers. The destination server (the server that ultimately satisfies the web request) receives requests from the anonymizing proxy server, and thus does not receive information about the end user’s address.

Proxies and VPNs are both designed to change your IP address and manipulate your internet browsing to allow you to access YouTube, Facebook etc. – so they will essentially unblock those restricted sites.

However a proxy doesn’t offer encryption, which means the information you are sending and receiving may be intercepted and stolen on public Wi-Fi. AVPN, on the other hand, will act both as a proxy and allow the access but also keeps your information and communication private due to encryption.

Hotspot Shield  is a great VPN option that protects your entire web surfing session, securing your connection at both your home Internet network and public internet networks (both wired and wireless). Hotspot Shield’sfree proxy protects your identity by ensuring that all web transactions (shopping, filling out forms, downloads, etc.) are secured through HTTPS—the protected internet protocol.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield VPN. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.

To VPN or Not to VPN, That is the Question!

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This question revolves around whether or not you want or need to head out into the wild, wild web wilderness exposed. By “exposed” I mean letting anyone within 300-500 feet of your device peek at the wireless data packets floating through the airand seeing all your raw data, or revealing who and where you are, what you like and don’t like, or revealing your IP address if you decide to comment on a blog or news article.

Most people feel they have nothing to hide or don’t think anyone’s really paying attention. But, in fact, we are all being stalked to a certain degree. Advertisers are watching so they can send you targeted ads; governments are watching to see if you are plotting to take them down or conducting illegal activities; your internet service provider is definitely monitoring your usage and wondering if you are downloading pirated movies, music and software; your employer may be similarly vigilant and criminals are trying to steal your identity or the identities of all your clients.

So, to VPN or not to VPN? I VPN specifically when I’m on my portable wireless devices. If I’m on my PC laptop, iPhone or iPad and I’m traveling on business, I know I’m going to be connecting to various free public WiFi clients at the airport and in my hotel. Before I connect to any WiFi, I launch Hotspot Shield VPN. It’s a free VPN, but I prefer the paid version; the expanded paid option is a little quicker and offers a cleaner interface. Either way, it’s agreat option that will protect your entire web surfing session, securing your connections on all your devices.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield VPN. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was StolenSee him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.

What Exactly is a VPN?

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A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a network set up to communicate privately over a public network. For example: You occasionally want to or need to work from home and your employer knows that if you do, the data that travels between your PC and an office PC needs to be protected. So your employer installs a program on his server and you install one on your computer that allows your computer to connect to the work computers privately.

Another example is remote access VPN tools. Whether you’re a road warrior or simply own multiple PCs and want access to all your data from anywhere, there are a few easy ways to do it. A quick search on “remote access” pulls up numerous options. But many of these programs are a little slow and sometimes clunky.

Most of these VPN tools have their own version of encryption. But when surfing the web on your local computer on a free, unprotected public network in a hotel, airport or coffee shop, your data is vulnerable to “sniffers.” That’s where another form of VPN comes in to protect your data between your laptop, iPad, iPhone or Android and an internet gateway. This kind of VPN creates an impenetrable tunnel to prevent snoopers, hackers and ISPs from viewing your web-browsing activities, instant messages, downloads, credit card information or anything else you send over the network.

Hotspot Shield VPN is a great option that protects your entire web surfing session, securing your connection at both your home Internet network and public internet networks (both wired and wireless). Hotspot Shield’s free proxy protects your identity by ensuring that all web transactions (shopping, filling out forms, downloads, etc.) are secured through HTTPS—the protected internet protocol.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert to Hotspot Shield VPN. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen   See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.

Iran Blocking VPNs on its Already Strangled Internet

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Free societies really have no idea what it’s like to live in a censored and controlled nation that locks down the internet and filters what citizens are allowed to consume.

Imagine wanting to login and research information on health or find a friend online or simply watch some funny videos on YouTube…only to discover that your government doesn’t allow it.

In Iran, the UK-based group Small Media reported,“Prominent Persian-language websites and other online services have been filtered one by one, and communications with external platforms is becoming progressively more difficult.”

Iran isn’t the only country like this. Countries with some kind of internet censorship are frequently Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, as well as some countries in Southeast Asia and China. Specifically, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Yemen and others in the MENA region block a lot of content and often communication applications like Skype, Viber and social media sites. Pakistan has blocked YouTube; in Vietnam, some ISPs block Facebook; some Central American countries block communication apps as well.

Reuters reports, “A widespread government internet filter prevents Iranians from accessing many sites on the official grounds they are offensive or criminal.”

“Many Iranians evade the filter through use of VPN software, which provides encrypted links directly to private networks based abroad, and can allow a computer to behave as if it is based in another country.”

“But authorities have now blocked ‘illegal’ VPN access, an Iranian legislator told the Mehr news agency on Sunday. Iranian web users confirmed that VPNs were blocked.”

It’s not just users in Iran who relyon US or European-based services that enable them to tunnel around the government censorship.

Robert Siciliano is an Identity Theft Expert. He is the author of 99 Things You Wish You Knew Before Your Identity Was Stolen See him discussing internet and wireless security on Good Morning America. Disclosures.