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The Best VPN Service Providers Of 2020

There are now over a hundred VPN providers located across the world. To create this list of the best VPN service providers, I test customer service, the reliability of their network, and commitment to privacy.

Streisand Makes Installing Your Own VPN Easier

One of the easiest way to install your own VPN is to use a piece of free software called Streisand. It is a remarkable open-source project that allows you to set-up and deploy your own VPN server with the minimum possible fuss.

Ivacy: A VPN Provider Based In Singapore

Ivacy is a VPN provider founded in 2007 and based in Singapore. This provider is active on social media and readily responds to support questions (via email, live chat and a ticketing system).

pCloud: A Cloud Provider That Offers Encrypted And Non-Encrypted Folders

pCloud is a secure cloud provider. The name is a bit unfortunate, but I’ve found their service to be reliable and well designed. pCloud is the first cloud storage provider to offer both encrypted and non-encrypted folders in the same account. The company explains why this makes sense: Although at first thought it is the most natural approach to just …

Tresorit: Cloud File Storage With End-To-End Encryption

Tresorit is a new encrypted cloud stroage provider, based in Switzerland. I’ve been testing their service for a few months, and it has performed well. Tresorit works in a familar Dropbox-type fashion. However, the difference is that Tresorit encrypts your files before they are uploaded to the cloud. This is what is called “end-to-end encryption”. It means your files are …

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Bitwarden: A Faster Alternative To Lastpass

Bitwarden is now my recommended password manager. This free, open source application is a replacement for properitary password managers like Lastpass and 1Password.

Three Hardware Wallets For Storing Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies

Here are three hardware wallets that can be used for the long term storage of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. These devices are separated from your computer — and thus virtually hacker proof. I recommend storing these wallets in a fireproof safe. For daily use, you can keep a small amount of bitcoins in a smartphone app like Breadwallet. I do …

Tor Project Will Pay Developers to Find Privacy Flaws

Tor developers have acknowledged security vulnerabilities in the platform, but also started a major effort to fix them, by launching a program that will pay people who find bugs in the Tor code. The new Tor initiative is a bug bounty program. That means programmers who review Tor code and find bugs will receive cash for their efforts. They don’t …

How North Korea’s “Red Star OS” Implements Censorship

Security researchers have revealed new details about the censorship features in North Korea’s homegrown operating system, Red Star OS, which monitors the files people store on their computer and traces them back to their source. Red Star OS is an operating developed by the North Korean government for use by the country’s citizens. It is based on Fedora Linux but …

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Tor Unveils Hardened Browser for Extra Security

The Tor project recently released the first version of its “hardened” Tor browser package. This release comes with extra security features designed to provide more privacy and protection against attacks. The Tor browser is a special Web browser package that makes it easy to connect to the Tor network. It is designed to be portable and self-contained, meaning you can …

Marionette Promises More Flexible Anti-Censorship Tools

Most anti-censorship tools attempt to provide a one-size-fits-all solution for accessing banned online content. Marionette, a “programmable network proxy” currently under development, could offer a much more robust anti-censorship solution. Marionette is an open-source project that aims to build “a programmable client-server proxy that enables the user to control network traffic features with a lightweight domain-specific language,” according to the …

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How Your Browser Fingerprint Affects Online Privacy

Sometimes, the harder you work to stay private online, the easier it is for people to track you. That’s because of the phenomenon called browser fingerprinting. Here’s what it means, and how to deal with it. When you visit websites, they collect information about your computer configuration. Some of this information is part of your Web browser’s user agent string, …

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Lead Linux Coder Warns Against Inevitable Security Flaws

From Heartbleed to Shellshock, the world of open-source computing has faced several high-profile security breaches in the last year. What are open-source developers – whose code powers many of the servers and websites that store millions of people’s personal information – doing about them? That’s the question Linus Torvalds, lead Linux kernel developer, helped answer a few days ago. Torvalds …

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Popcorn Time: Watch Torrent Movies Instantly

Update: Popcorn Time is gone. No, it’s apparently back. Popcorn Time is a free application that streams torrents and plays them instantly in your browser. Basically, it’s like Netflix but more efficient, and much of media in the world is available to you. The developers say “it works as a browser that uses HTML, CSS and JavaScript to serve the …