InMotion wrote:Not to be paranoid, but it says the free VPN service is provided for an experiment? What do you think the experiment is? Or do they mean they experimented and made free VPN's?
From hereThe problem that this research solvesOur motivation to begin the VPN Gate Experiment are to solve the following existing problems.
Existing Problem #1. Government's Firewall Blocks to Access Oversea Web Services for OverprotectionThe Internet is a revolutionary network to enable all user's computers and servers to communicate each other without any restriction. Any web sites which are provided by individuals or companies can be reachable from anywhere around the world. Each people in the world is a potential customer of a web service. So every Internet companies are trying to develop and improve their web services continuously. World-wide competitions occur, and qualities of every services will be better and better, forever.
Such competitions over the world without any barriers are essential for improving the quality of Internet services. Internet provides such a great playing field for fair competition environment. However, some countries are attempting to interfere against the fair competition. For example, great video-sharing sites such as YouTube, or excellent SNS sites such as Twitter or Facebook, are existing in the world. Some governments place a contents-filter on the border between domestic and international Internet. Such a contents-filter is used to be called "Government's Firewall" . People in such a country are often affected by the government's firewall.
In United States, Japan and most of Europe countries, people prohibits their governments from placing such a government's firewall, by the Constitution. However, it is said that some other countries have such a firewall for contents-filtering.
The government's firewall force the people to use only domestic web services instead of international web services. They cannot visit international web-services which compete with domestic web-services. In other words, such a government supplies unfair advantages to the few domestic web-service providers in exchange for push inconveniences to the all Internet users of the country. In the long-term viewpoint such a government's overprotecting policies will be cause of decline in public-interests, because most of people in the country are blinded to the world-valuable overseas web services.
It is convenient for users behind the government's firewall if they can free-access to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook or other great web services. As the consequence, over-protected domestic web-service providers under unfair good-treatment by the government's firewall will be involved to the world-wide fair competitions. In the long-term view, the competitions will improve both domestic and international web services, and every domestic people will receive benefits.
Existing Problem #2. Identifying an individual by tracing an IP address on the access log of the server is possible.If you access to web sites, or send an e-mail, your source IP address will be logged on the destination web server, or on the headers included in the e-mail contents.
An IP address is not a personal information as only it. However, IP address can be used to track an individual who makes activities over several web sites. Such a tracing technique is used for unwanted advertising.
Additionally, an IP address can be used to identify the person who initiated the concerning communication, by using the law-enforcements procedures. Polices, prosecutors or lawyers can abuse their privileges to request the log files of IP address allocation which are hold by ISPs. Such IP address allocation logs are enclosed by ISPs in usual time. However, once someone obtains the logs, he can investigate who sent an e-mail, or who post a message to the web site. It might be abused to revenge to the one who conducted an indictment for public interests. The risk of IP address traceability might discourages the good people's motivation to accuse something for public benefit.
Moreover, on the Internet, a person who was assigned a specific IP address at a specific time will be regarded to have the responsibility of any illegal communications which were initiated from that IP address at the same time. Recently in Japan, law-enforcer's disgraceful matters are criticized as serious problems that law-enforcement officers mistaken arrests innocent Internet users who never conduct nothing illegal on his computer but the computer was infected a Trojan which is controlled remotely by the real criminal person. The real criminal person let the computer of the innocent Internet user to send blackmails to some companies, and the innocent persons was arrested unjustly by law-enforcers. The innocents were finally released, but it was one of the worst false accusation incidents in Japan's recent history.
Therefore, it is preferable that there is a method to hide your real IP address temporary when you access to the Internet. If your real IP address will be hidden, no advertisement-purposed IP address tracing will be unsuccessful. The risk of IP address traceability will be reduced, and the good people who are planning to accuse something for public interests will be easy to do it. The risk of mistaken arrests will never come to you if you hide your real IP address while connecting to the Internet, even if your computer is infected by Trojan or malicious software.
Existing Problem #3. Public Wi-Fi is under the risk of packet tapping.Most of public Wi-Fi can be tapped by everyone. Your plaintext communication are not safe. Wired networks are also under the risk of tapping. ARP spoofing attackers can capture your packets. Moreover, the network administrator or the facility owner of cafe or airport who provides the public Wi-Fi can always tap on your communication. Even if you are using Internet at your home, there is a risk that the employee of your ISP or telecom company might tapping on the line to peek your plaintext packets. (In fact, there was a criminal incident that an employee of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Company conducted the wiretapping in the telecom building. So we can never trust employees of ISPs or telecom companies.)
When using HTTP, POP3 or IMAP plain-text communication on the Internet, you cannot avoid the tapping. SSL (HTTPS) is secure against tapping, however most of web sites uses HTTP. HTTP packets are transmitted in the plaintext format.
It is preferable that there is a method to encrypt all communications to Internet servers automatically. In such a situation, no one on the local network or local telecom building cannot peek contents of your packets.
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The OHTIn New York, we wrote the legal number on our arms in marker...To call a lawyer if we were arrested.
In Istanbul, People wrote their blood types on their arms. I hear in Egypt, They just write Their names.
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