We connect every day to WiFi hotspots – in the coffee shop, in the airport, everywhere, but we often ignore the security risk behind joining open wireless networks. Hackers, armed with a sniffing program an a network card capable of entering ‘promiscuous’ mode, can steal your passwords and other sensitive data if you’re not protected. Join me as I take a look at Witopia’s VPN service and Anchor Free.

Before we start, you should get to know the basics about VPN (Virtual Private Network). There is a comprehensive article over at Wikipedia you should consider reading.

What are the main benefits?

• Your ISP can’t see what you’re doing online – downloading via bittorrent, sending emails, watching movies – they can’t tell the difference because your traffic is encrypted.
• Websites you visit see VPN’s IP address instead of yours – they can’t track your real location. This also works for hiding your P2P traffic – as long as the RIAA doesn’t subpoena the VPN service.
• Access blocked websites disabled by your ISP. They can’t see what you’re doing, and you’re using non-standard ports.

What is Witopia?

Founded in 2003 by former UUNET managers, WiTopia was originally known as Full Mesh Networks. As such, we developed a hosted platform to secure and manage Wi-Fi networks, as well as perform Wireless Intrusion Prevention, over the Internet.

One of Witopia’s services, personalVPN, is the subject of our discussion. personalVPN is a cross platform (Windows, Linux, Mac OS) consumer oriented VPN solution based on openVPN.

OpenVPN is a full-featured open source SSL VPN solution that accommodates a wide range of configurations, including remote access, site-to-site VPNs and Wi-Fi security.

How does it work?

I’ll try to explain how WItopia’s VPN works  step-by-step:

• You set up your machine/device either with the pre-packaged installer or the Wiki instructions. This doesn’t take more than 5 minutes.
• You start the openVPN software which automatically connects to Witopia’s gateway; it creates an encrypted ‘tunnel’ between you and VPN service provider. The key is 128bit and the data stream encrypted with the Blowfish cypher.
• This does not slow down the system noticeably, as Blowfish is known to be one of the lightest block cyphers – it even works on the iPhone.

What’s special about Witopia?

• Fast servers – I had no problem downloading podcasts and videos from iTunes or watching movies on YouTube/Hulu.
• Reliability – only one hour scheduled down-time Saturday at 2200-2300 GMT.
• Witopia has its own ‘Secure Certificate Authority’ which means only you and Witopia can read the traffic, and no other third party.
• Access websites intended for US only from other countries. This means Hulu, Fox, Lala, Spiralfrog and many more. This works because Witopia is based in the US.
• Has an incredibly helpful and comprehensive Wiki, with instructions for setting everything up and lots of questions: all in clear language, with the tech speak reduced to minimum.
• Has a very fast support team, get answers back in less than a day.
• Supports both SSL and PPTP protocols.
• Witopia allows port 443 access. It’s rare that VPN is blocked, but if it happens, customers can access special servers which should get through.
• openVPN works on Windows Mobile 5 &6.
• Bandwidth – there is no throttling or caps; as long as you’re not ‘running a phone company’ over it you’ll be fine.

OpenVPN software is cross-platform.

Anchor Free HotSpot Shield

Anchor Free’s VPN solution called Hotspot Shield, was featured recently as a top download on Lifehacker and PCMag.com – and my opinion is that its only advantage is that it’s free. And you get what you pay for: the installer tries to ‘sell’ you on other software you really don’t need, and inserts banner ads on top of all pages you visit.

There are no limitations on bandwidth, it can be used on landlines or wifi networks, and users have the option to click out of the ads if they so choose.

I found the service too slow to be used for any other activity than surfing: Hulu, Fox and YouTube were noticeably crippled; a 10Gb cap on the monthly traffic has been reported by some users, which isn’t nearly enough if you plan to watch movies or download large files. If you want to continue using the service beyond that, you have to pay.

And, of course, there is the privacy policy,  and many bloggers have expressed this concern. If they intercept all your traffic to place ads in it – who’s to say they don’t look for other things, not necessarily evil, but still invading privacy? Anchor Free however denies this:

AnchorFree is unique in it’s ability to meld targeted & contextual relevance with privacy in a way that is consistent with industry regulations, making it particularly unique in being the only online ad platform that respects stringent user-centric privacy, an issue which is highly important of late given the numerous problems with ISPs and ad-tracking (NebuAd, Phorm, and even Google getting caught up in the mix). Most advertisers and websites typically try and gather as much personally identifiable information as possible, including each user’s IP address, in their attempts to serve targeted ads. … targeting ads only based on domains visited. -David Gordoyansky, CEO of Anchor Free

Instead of a simple technical explanation, I received a marketing pitch, which was quite disappointing and only makes Anchor Free look bad.

Conclusion

Witopia’s personalVPN and Anchor Free are definitely worth a try if you’re concerned about your privacy online. Witopia’s website is available here; Anchor Free. I’d like to encourge comments about Anchor Free and Witopia -  how was your experience with the service? Which one do you think is best?