VPN providers = bad guys?

The VPN industry itself is suffering from those “bad advertisement” since most people now associate VPN providers with the “bad guys.” So, as a simple VPN user, you may also be assimilated to a hacker. Indeed, even though you are only using a VPN solution to overcome some geo-location limitation, you may still be at risk of being considered as a “hacker.” You know, like the lambda user who wants to view Hulu or BBC iPlayer from their computer even though he is not located in an approved country.

If we look at it, to keep their business rolling, we can think that those VPN services must have some “secret weapon” that will allow them to seen as a “clean” player in this field – especially from anti-piracy entities. That may be one of the reasons why very few VPN providers dare mention that they don’t store any logs of what their VPN clients are doing over this connection that they are establishing. But, that’s still fine if your only use for VPN service is for overcoming geographical limitations.

Is still PayPal a good option?

But things are getting more “limiting” for VPN providers. Indeed, not so long ago, Paypal – one of the most used online payment processor/gateway have refused the use of their payment system to BtGuard. BtGuard is a VPN service which is known for providing a VPN service that is BitTorrent compliant.

BitTorrent is another system that is commonly assimilated to file sharing. And unfortunately for them, whenever people think of file sharing, they directly think of illegal file sharing. Although BitTorrent is also used for legally sharing files between peers – a lot of software vendors make their latest version available for download via Torrent.

Recommended reading: 12 Tips on How to Torrent Safely

So what’s the point here? It seems clear that to fight against piracy and hackers, most government entities, as well as big players, have decided to cut it from the roots: at the payment processing level. Indeed, Paypal is not the only payment processor that exists nowadays (PerfectMoney is somehow similar). But, since it’s one of the major player – whatever decision it takes against VPN providers will be a strong signal to the market.

What about Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies?

Have you been able to set up your Bitcoin wallet, buy Bitcoins and use them for VPN payment? From my personal experience, it is not as easy as it sounds and not easy to understand. But, it may worth the pain as it is probably the most anonymous payment option available at this time. Also, Ripple VPN payments are possible.

Some VPN services like ibVPN, PureVPN or Private Internet Access use the CoinPayments payment processors that accept more than 500 different coins. Thus, you may get a VPN account with virtually any (popular) cryptocurrency.

Can you use gift cards to pay for a VPN?

As oddly as it may sound, yes. At least one VPN service (Private Internet Access) allows you to pay anonymously with many major brand gift cards like Starbucks, Best Buy, or Best Buy.

How do you pay for your VPN account?

So this brings me back to my initial question at the title of this article: what is your preferred payment processor when buying a VPN package? As for me, having a Paypal option as the payment processor gave more trust to me into the provider (well, that’s not the only argument I’m looking for, but I do admit I scarcely go for a VPN provider that do not have Paypal payment facilities).

How do you make your VPN payment? Do you think this is one argument that will influence your VPN buying decision? Or do you think that it doesn’t matter not having PayPal option so long as you can pay via other alternatives (Alertpay, Plimus, Moneybookers, bitcoin, …)

Internet Freedom – Tech solutions

Indeed, we’ve come up with technical solutions that either rely on proxies or VPN solutions. I guess most of our readers know, by now, my favorite VPN solution providers who are ibVPN (read our complete ibVPN review), PureVPN, Private Internet Access, HideMyAss, NordVPN or IPVanish. But the Internet has grown so vast; it has proven to be a media that can drastically make a change. We all know how the Arab spring sparkled from the Internet, but if we dig further, there’s a lot of stories to be told concerning how the internet has changed this world.

But at some point of time, solutions can’t be technical anymore – and with the pressure of different lobbying, we all know that there’s a fear of the internet becoming a closed wall. By “controlling” the flow of information on the Internet, big companies, as well as governments, are given the power to censor it, or actively push forward the dissemination of “their point of view.”

Declaration of Internet Freedom

It is where the “Declaration of Internet Freedom” comes in. I like the way it is put forward since it reminds us of the “declaration of freedom” or some of those “human rights” declarations that a lot of people swear with. Truth to be told, this declaration has to be known and applied by the highest number of people. And, for that to happen, it has to be translated into the highest number of languages available. It is the time where we praise the efforts made by GlobalVoices Lingua project (and its translators) since they have launched a worldwide effort to translate this “declaration of Internet Freedom.”

Quoting some figures of a GlobalVoices article, there are 6 909 living languages used on this planet. Holy cow, that’s a considerable number. While it’s clear that on the internet, only a few of those languages hold for 90% of the content published, this doesn’t mean that this “Declaration of Internet Freedom” shouldn’t be translated into other languages.

So here’s the deal: we know that our readers are coming from different parts of the World, and we bet you are all familiar with some “non-popular internet language.” So why don’t we give a hand to this global translation effort and make this declaration one of the most popular crowd-translated documents?

Translation day

Wait, wait, wait. I know that the official “translation day” already happened on August 3rd (according to ), but I’m sure no one will say no if some volunteers still want to join in and help with translating for languages that haven’t found any translators yet.

So it’s not like we’re late on this, but we want to share the info and mobilize our readers to contribute to this worth-mentioning and undoubtedly important project that is in line with what we are trying to achieve here on How-to-hide-ip.

So anyone feeling motivated enough for translating?

When I decided to write this article, I couldn’t help but wonder if an acronym such as DD-WRT would even trigger some interest in our blog readers. After all, there’s already a ton of abbreviations hanging on this blog, so there’s a high risk of “selective processing” from readers that would push them to ignore this article. So, first of all, congratulations. Congratulations if you’ve read this far in this article. I promise this is going to be an eye-opening reading since it may give a new life to your router. So hang on.

But first of all, what is a DD-WRT?

DD-WRT is kind of “universal” Linux-based firmware that can be used as a replacement to your current router’s “operating system.” Best of all, it can be downloaded for free from the internet – and don’t get me wrong, free doesn’t mean “low-grade” system. Indeed, most of the routers that are shipped nowadays are only limited to a certain set of features- then some great marketing guys would categorize them to segments like “entry,” “for home office,” “professional” use.  So, with DD-WRT, that same hardware that came with your router can be added a lot of new features. Indeed, if you decide to replace your router’s firmware with a DD-WRT version, you’ll be able to:

• transform that old-router into a Wi-Fi hotspot (even though your genuine router’s firmware wouldn’t allow that);
• add finer control over QoS options. For those who are wondering what QoS is, it stands for “Quality of Service.” IT’s a generic term for every finer control that can be applied at the router’s level for managing bandwidth and access. For example, one router administrator can define at the router level that machine A would be limited to a 100Kb download speed while his computer wouldn’t be limited at all. Almost every network manager out there are using some QoS at the router level to manage that small bandwidth to multiple users;
• accept IPv6 protocol even though your router only came shipped with IPv4 support.

Is DD-WRT only for popular routers? Should I then replace my router’s firmware?

Well, as with most popular software, there is a database of routers that support the DD-WRT on the official website. Now, back to the second question: it’s not mandatory that you replace your router’s firmware with DD-WRT – after all, you’ve been working with it for a specified period now without any problems. But if you are considering adding new features, or if you have decided to give a new life to an old router, then you probably need to consider installing DD-WRT software features.

So why consider opting for a DD-WRT firmware replacement?

Heck, that’s a good question. But don’t worry, we’ll bring some answers to this:

• a lot of VPN solution provider support it. You may have seen it popping up all the time whenever you are considering buying a VPN solution (BTW, the following are great options for VPN – Virtual Private Networks: HideMyAss, ibVPN, PureVPN, Private Internet Access, or NordVPN). Indeed, most serious VPN providers come with support for DD-WRT- some even have quite detailed installation process. Thus, you will be able to hide your public IP address, browse the Internet safely, unblock restricted websites (BBC iPlayer, Netflix).
• it adds more features to your current router: as I said earlier, with DD-WRT, you can turn your router into an excellent Wi-Fi hotspot.

Bonus 1: How to setup ibVPN on DD-WRT router

ibVPN provides a pretty clear tutorial for this installation: DD-WRT routers OpenVPN setup, except for a couple of tips that are useful for the not-tech users.

Installing ibVPN on a router

Step 1: Download the file ibVPN DD-WRT ovpn (OpenVPN configuration files) from the site.  Copy the entire file into your Command Shell (Administration => Commands) and replace “your@email.address VPNpassword” with the login info you received from ibVPN.

Next, click Save Startup.

Step 2. Change DNS settings. ibVPN recommends the Google DNS servers:

google-public-dns-a.google.com 8.8.8.8
google-public-dns-b.google.com 8.8.4.4

Go to Tab Setup => Basic Setup  and make the following changes:

Then click Save.  It only remains for you only to reboot your router.

Step 3: Configuring IPs. Each package has its own IP addresses.  For the package TorrentVPN here they are:

NL: 62.212.72.172 (Amsterdam2)
TO: 46.165.196.25 (Frankfurt2)
LU: 212.117.165.18 (Luxemburg)

Simply put this script in your Command Shell: /tmp/ibvpn/vpn start + IP resulting /tmp/ibvpn/vpn start 62.212.72.172 for NL address .  Click Run Commands.

The message launching OpenVPN process appears.  Wait a few minutes and the process is completed.  Use the following script to stop the IP VPN: /tmp/ibvpn/vpn stop.

Troubleshooting

In case of VPN connection problems:

• First: Remove “explicit-exit-notify 3″ of the startup script. Reboot and set the desired IP.
• Contact support.  To facilitate the help you can give the logs.  Just do three very easy command line (Make Run Commands between each line):
  * ps
  * ip ro l
  * cat / tmp / ibvpn / vpn.log

What gives with this command line: ps – Click on Run Commands to bring up the Log.  Repeat the operation for each line.

You have now finished the VPN setup on your DD-WRT router. ibVPN is a premium VPN service that provides access to servers from over 100 locations. It is well-known for the quality of the support and the flexibility of their packages.

Bonus 2: How to setup VpnTunnel with OpenVPN on DD-WRT

You may follow the next steps in order to setup VPNTunnel DD-WRT. From your 192.168.1.1 interface, you access your router and its configuration.

1 – In the Services tab => VPN

You enable OpenVPN Daemon and check Start OpenVPN Daemon and WAN Up.

In the case that you have CA Cert in the box, you copy your file ca.cert witch you will find in the VpnTunnel.Se user account.

Next, in the Private Client Key box, you put on two lines your Username and your Password.

In the box OpenVPN config file you copy your OpenVPN configuration.

This file OpenVPN gives this script:

float
client
dev tap
proto udp
nobind
; Cert
ca / etc / openvpn / keys / ca.crt
ns-cert-type server
cipher BF-CBC # Blowfish
; VPN Server
remote-random
remote melissa.vpntunnel.se 1194
remote melissa.vpntunnel.se 10010
remote melissa.vpntunnel.se 10020
; Auth
auth-user-pass # passwd
persist-key
persist-tun
; Logging
comp-lzo
verb 1

Two lines must change:
ca / etc / openvpn / keys / ca.crt by AC / tmp / openvpn / ca.crt

auth-user-pass # passwd auth-user-pass / tmp / openvpn / key.pem

Then click on Save settings and Apply.

2 – In the Administration tab => commands

Copy this script and confirm with Save Firewall

iptables-I FORWARD-i br0-o tap0-j ACCEPT
iptables-I FORWARD-i tap0-o br0-j ACCEPT
iptables-I INPUT-i tap0-j REJECT
iptables-t nat-A POSTROUTING-o tap0-j MASQUERADE

3 – Reboot the router

Administration tab => Management and Reboot button to validate this router config.

To check your new IP: xmyip.com.

Changing DNS

In case of connection problems: untimely cuts / slow speed/ no change of IP, the DNS change to stabilize your computer and solve these problems.

1 – In XP – Vista

Open the Windows Control Panel => Open “Local Area Connection” => Right-click on the icon of your network connection => select “Properties” => Select “Internet Protocol (TCP / IP)” => Click Properties => Check “Use the following DNS server addresses” and then in the Preferred DNS server and Alternate DNS server, type addresses 80.67.0.2 and 91.213.246.2

Click OK and restart your computer.

2 – In Windows 7

Windows Control Panel => “Network and Internet” => “Network and Sharing Center” => “Change adapter settings” => Right-click on “Local Area Connection” => Click Properties.  => “Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)” => “Properties” => First click on the button “Use the following DNS server addresses” and enter your preferred DNS server and auxiliary.  Type the address 80.67.0.2 and 91.213.246.2

Click OK and restart your computer.

To sum up, VpnTunnel.Se works excellent on DD-WRT, and it’s an excellent choice if you want to install in on your router.

Now, your turn – have you switched to using a DD-WRT router? What do you think of the DD-WRT software features? What’s your personal experience? Feel free to share in the comment section.

Subtle changes to the Facebook platform

But have you noticed the number of subtle changes that Facebook have brought to the platform lately? Not only are they subtle, but we can count a lot of them. Indeed, Facebook is no more than a social network where people hang out sharing and playing the “voyeur” into someone else’s life- it is now an actual business: which means it has to be very good at reporting success to its investors. The withdrawal of a $10 ad budget from General Motors right before Facebook IPO is a clear sign that companies are doubtful about how useful Facebook Ads can be: indeed Facebook’s business model, so far, is mainly based on ads.

When talking about ads, advertisers want measurable indicators showing them how broad (or narrow) the reach of their campaign is. To back this: you surely have noticed that, in groups, Facebook is now showing the number of people who have seen one post. But the same principle also applies to pages since they came up with more detailed Fan Pages statistics.

Moving towards “real persons” social media platform

But if we want to move back to the topic of this blog, which is about “online anonymity guide,” then Facebook is moving more and more into a “real persons” social media platform. Indeed, while before, one could open an account with Facebook and use whatever fancy (or promotional) pseudo they can think of, it is now clear that Facebook is catching up with putting an actual person/physical name into all the pseudos.

Facebook changes – Verification process

First, for people who are opening accounts on Facebook, they’ve set up some filter for checking if your name is your name. If for some reasons, the name you are entering during the signup process triggers some “red flag” into Facebook name verification, then Facebook will launch some verification process that may be cumbersome.

But the checking process even goes further: Facebook is asking for your friends to confirm (or not) if you are using your actual name. Indeed, they send some requests to your friend asking this question, reassuring you that your answer would be kept anonymous. While you can still answer by “I don’t want to answer,” it is clear that there’s a high number of people who’ll soon receive an inquiry to change their name on Facebook in the coming months (I wish I could show you a screenshot of that question asked by Facebook).

What is the purpose of the modifications

But what’s the use of all those Facebook changes: it’s pretty simple. Facebook wants to become a massive database of actual people that marketers can tap into. The finer your profile on this social network is, the more interesting you become to marketers, and the bigger the paycheck for Facebook. So I guess, we can expect a lot of changes within Facebook in the next couple of months that would “invade” our privacy.

Recommended reading: Ways to unblock Facebook online now

Do you think this matters to you as a Facebook user?

So what do we have: we have millions of people using popular websites every day – from the almost 1 billion Facebook users to the 2 billion (or more) Google searches performed every day – we can say that there’s a lot of collective intelligence out there.

Security and privacy issues

On the other hand, almost the same users are facing significant problems with security and privacy: either they are prone to spreading malware (or being attacked by them), or they are simply hit by viruses. The usual way for those users to protect themselves from those threats is to buy and install some “security software” – I use the word security since it can cover anti-viruses, firewall, antispyware, antimalware, hide IP tools, and all the upcoming anti-something that may arise later on.

Idea: use the “reCAPTCHA” system for fighting against viruses and malware

So what? The idea is simple: use the same idea behind the “reCAPTCHA” system for fighting against viruses and malware. Indeed, the “reCAPTCHA” system is a genius tool that makes every internet user contributes to doing some post-OCR work on scanned books: the humans that are asked to enter some captcha word on any internet forms are validating some OCR (optical character reading?) on some nice words.

At the end of the day, the millions of ways that have been human-read and entered can be used for digitalizing an old book.

So, why can’t we do that for viruses and malware?

After all, most people are using, for example, Google and Facebook on a daily basis. Can’t those same people be used to feed some public database of “virus signature”? After all, most computers already come with some anti-virus software: can’t we just set up an add-on to those anti-virus software to feed that public virus database so that Facebook or Google (or whatever popular website you are visiting) can alert you if they find some of those signatures from your computer when you browse their websites? After all, that same principle of “public database” is already used for maintaining a list of Spammers IP addresses when it comes to managing e-mail servers.

Wouldn’t it be great that, by installing an app on our computer, websites that we visit can authoritatively inform us on corrective actions that we have to take to resolve some virus/malware issues we may have on our computer? At the same time, we would also help other users by feeding the same public database. At the end of the day, we would have cleaner computers as well as lesser phishing/spoofing sites that may put our privacy at security breach.

Just thinking out loud. What do you think? Is this something feasible? If not, what would be the obstacles?

Disposable mobiles for contacting the lawyers

Indeed, the “lesson” comes from Katie Holmes as she used disposable mobile phones for initiating the contact with lawyers that will prepare to file the divorce. Hollywood movies have been great at telling us stories about spies tracking their suspects from those suspect’s mobile phones, credit card usage as well as internet usage.

As a lambda internet user, we can initially think that those abilities are only available to the highly-equipped intelligence unit. I’m sure, if you ever watched spy movies, you take it for granted that those intelligence units can triangulate to precisely define where a cell phone is located.

Another classic situation is the geek of the unit who comes by announcing that he’s tracked from his computer that the credit card of the suspect has been used somewhere in the country. Well, I may have watched too many 24hours series (I’ve watched them all eight seasons and miss it). But, as “unexpected” as it can be, reality has just reminded us that those happen. Well, at least, Katie Holmes had some serious reasons for not trusting her regular cell phone. Though she had to have, a friend buy her a disposable one for having private conversations with her lawyers.

The privacy and anonymity of a divorce

What’s ironic with this situation is that, viewed from our point of view, this privacy issue on the divorce of this highly popular couple just reminds us about the movie called “The Firm” that Tom Cruise once played where his character was a promising lawyer that got into a high-end law firm – and that by the end of the day his character ended up in trying not to be tracked. But this time, in reality, his wife thinks that he (or the unit he is part of) is the prosecutor.

What do YOU think?

So, what does this story mean to us, lambda users who aren’t necessarily at the forefront of every tabloid?  Are we safer because we aren’t popular? Does these tracking tools only apply to “high target” people?

Frankly, I can’t tell you. What’s your view on this?

All I can say is that screenwriters are becoming very precise (or imaginative?) about all those “secret tools” that are used to track us. From the series 24hours to the most recent one called “Person Of Interest”- they all mention some kind of “machine” or “system” that allow them to track almost everybody. On the other hand, when talking about our internet sessions, we all know that cookies are everywhere for tracking whatever you do, under the excuse that they are used for customizing your internet browsing experience.

So, is this Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes divorce a story we can relate to as a lambda user?

Share your view in the comment section.

For once, let’s take some sidewalk in this article and consider one issue that most of our users are facing.

Considering that most of the readers of this blog are located in places where they have to do some tricks – by using VPN services like (HideMyAss, ibVPN, NordVpn or PureVPN are great options, by the way) – so as to access some useful online resources (Hulu, Netflix, iPlayer of BBC, Spotify, and so on and so forth), I thought it’d be interesting to do some extrapolation and see how far we can go with this trick. Learn about buying online from unsupported countries.

So what is the issue we want to address here? It’s pretty standard: let’s consider the guy that lives somewhere in a remote country that don’t have access to “common” things in developed nations, but who want to purchase something online.

What are the obstacles?

Let’s say the guy lives in Madagascar. Well, you can take any country that has the same environment, you get the idea: is an island (not a movie, BTW)  that don’t usually get access to services like Spotify (although I wrote an article earlier showing how I could access it from here). Moreover, considering that I want to buy some physical products online, chances are that the vendor doesn’t ship to this country.

First of all, depending on the online resources that he wants to access, it may happen that the same online resource is only available to people who are physically located in the US (for example).  So he has to find a way to access the online resource first.

Now, assuming he found a way for accessing the online resource (more on that on the following paragraph), he still has to provide a US-based address to ship the product to, then have that same product shipped to him in his own country.

Finally, the chances are that buying online isn’t as evident as it may seem from where he is.

Some solutions (although limited)

Let’s start with the easy one: access to the online resource. In fact, this is easy to solve since, with a VPN solution, he can pretend to be browsing from a US-based city thereby allowing him to overcome the location-limitation. It has a wide range of articles dealing with how to apply that solution.

Now when it comes to telling the vendor where to ship the product, the chances are that it can only be shipped to a US address. But here again, there are a lot of services that allow you to send and forward your products. Those usually are paid services but, solutions exist. You have to Google a bit and find such answers. You can even rent a US-based address and manage the emails online. The “only” requirement is that you send to the service provider a notarized proof of your country’s residential address – but that’s not difficult to have.

Then comes the online payment: more often than not, paying via Paypal should be possible from the country you are based in. At least, some banks will allow him to have an international Visa card that can then be associated with a Paypal account from which he can proceed to payment. In such cases where Paypal isn’t an option, you can still fall back to other solutions like moneybookers.com that is becoming more and more integrated into e-commerce sites.

Conclusion

As I told in the introduction, I’m going a bit sidewalk in this article, but I think this topic addresses an actual need from the readers of this blog. Now, the usual thing: your turn now, wanna share how you do it from your own country?

Feel free to add to the comment section and let us know about your “buying online” experience.

For the braves …

For those who were brave enough (or serious enough about protecting their online data), the chances are that they’ve been through that same set of automatic password criteria evaluation. Remember sentences like the following?

• Your password needs to be at least eight characters long
• Your password should contain at least a number
• Your password should at least include one upper case letter
• You can’t reuse a password

… and the list goes on.

Most of the times, that same website had made you thinking of that great password, and even though it asks you to enter it twice, the chances are that you’ll forget that awesome-uncrackable password the next time you need to login to that same website. Raise your hands if you already encountered that issue? I did.

The nice password validation process

Next time you come back to that same website (assuming that you are smart enough not to check the “keep me logged in” feature on some websites), chances are that you’ll click on that “reset your password” link. And guess what? You’ll have to go again through all the password validation process to get another awesome-uncrackable password. Then you start thinking of writing it down somewhere – which is a terrible idea, and some websites even have the courtesy of reminding you that you shouldn’t write it down.

So, you’ve watched that funny video. Have you seen how creative that Gal could be finding some variations on a topic that she loves: dogs? I especially like the portion about the “You cannot use passwords that have been used in the last six months.”

Have you noticed the trick she is using?

She increases some numbers, hoping this will do it. We’ve all used that trick, I’m sure. And that “palindrome” criteria are just plain crazy. I had to check on my dictionary to find the right meaning of “palindrome”- and I do admit it takes some imagination to find some palindromes – then trying to apply it to a password is just way out of most people’s mind.

Indeed, the times where you could just put your birthday as a password are way behind us (at least for serious online platforms). I wouldn’t be surprised that at some point of time, not only would websites increase the difficulty for generating passwords, but they will also ask you to enter some Captcha to make sure there’s no robot out there trying to crack user’s password.

Anyway, while this sketch is “a bit” out of reality, there’s a lot of actual issues that are raised in it. But I can’t help mentioning the irony of the sketch when it shows she did all of this for what? For being able to vote for the cutest puppy, and then for the cutest horse? Come on. Who needs a password for that?

Your two cents: do you find it hard creating a password?

P.S: I kind of like the look that girl on the video has with her big glasses, don’t you?

This post presents my experience on installing BolehVPN on an Ubuntu Linux computer.

Since the BolehVPN giveaway that How-To-Hide-Ip made lately has seen a lot of success, we thought we’d continue getting into more details into that VPN service. A review, as well as the Windows platform installation, have already been written here (hey, by the way, in case you are wondering, the ten people who won the giveaway have been announced on that same article).

So why don’t we consider another platform for installing it? Since Ubuntu is one of the popular Linux distribution out there (and since this is the one I am using), I thought I could take you through the installation process. So for your reference purposes, I am using the 32bit version of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (aka precise), on an Intel-based laptop.

For this article, I have uninstalled the OpenVPN package, but for your case, it may be that this package is already installed.

Pre-requisites – Install OpenVPN

So let’s first install the OpenVPN package:

heryzo@xxxxx:~$ sudo apt-get install openvpn

Personally, I like configuring all network-related tasks via the network-manager. So, I like taking the following extra-step (which is not mandatory, but quite useful). For that purpose, we need to install the package “network-manager-openvpn.” You can do that via the following command:

heryzo@xxxx:~$ sudo apt-get install network-manager-openvpn

Download BolehVPN Ubuntu activation keys

Then let’s download the activation keys for BolehVPN. You can find it from your BolehVPN dashboard once you’ve purchased a package. This process will have you download a zip file containing different configurations.

For this example, I’ve chosen to use the Canada landing point for my VPN connection, though I issued the following command.

So let’s first copy all the files that have been downloaded to /etc/openvpn

heryzo@xxxx:/etc/openvpn$ sudo cp /home/heryzo/Downloads/bolehvpn/hidemyip/* .

heryzo@xxxx:/etc/openvpn$ sudo cp /home/heryzo/Downloads/bolehvpn/hidemyip/FullyRouted-Canada.ovpn hidemyip.conf

Be careful with this last step: the official documentation on BolehVPN says to rename the file to openvpn.conf. However, I’ve found some mismatch since the keys that I downloaded from the same BolehVPN named my certificate files into hidemyip.crt and hidemyip.key. It took me some minutes figuring out what was wrong with my settings. Until I found out that I had to rename the conf file similar to the key files, though the use of hidemyip.conf instead of openvpn.con

Start the OpenVPN service

Now let’s start the OpenVPN service by issuing the following command:

heryzo@xxxx:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/openvpn start

* Starting virtual private network daemon(s)… * Autostarting VPN ‘hidemyip’

Note that shell command mentions that it automatically started the “hidemyip” VPN tunnel.

BolehVPN Ubuntu – All set!

Then we’re all set. Let’s check if whatismyipaddress.com finds out that I’m no more in Madagascar – and preferably, let’s hope it finds that I am somewhere in Canada.

So here’s the screenshot.

It seems like we’re all set. Let’s try one of those favorite websites that don’t allow guys located in places like mine to surf on. Hulu, are you going to remind me again that your service is not available in my country? Let’s see.

So I could load one of the most popular movies on Hulu today – I chose “Master Chef” since I like cooking shows I’d better stop this streaming session with Master Chef. Otherwise, I’ll end up watching the whole episode- which is not the goal …

Conclusion

Anyway, I hope this little “how-to” would have helped Linux users have their BolehVPN connection all-setup. I’ve mentioned a little trick that, I’m pretty sure, some Linux users would have blocked them to get it going. Enjoy!

But let’s see first the advantages of using a VPN

A Virtual Private Network (commonly known as VPN) is a layer that allows you to connect securely to a remote server (or network) through an encrypted tunnel. That encrypted tunnel is created on top of the usual internet connection that you are regularly using. Depending on the implementation, the encryption can have many forms (header only, packet, etc.), and different protocols can be used based on the agreement between your computer (or network) and the remote network.

Reasons for using a VPN

Here are few reasons for using a VPN connection:

– For accessing your online bank account: there are few options here. Most of the time, your bank’s IT system will already come with security in mind. But they can only protect what they can control from their end. So as to add some layer of security, you may want to use a VPN that encrypts your internet connection,

– For securing your public Wi-Fi connection: we are now living in a connected world, and most of the time, you’ll be located in places where public Wi-Fi is available. Some cities allow you to connect to a Wi-Fi that they are providing, most hotels make Wi-Fi connections available for their guests, and airports usually have that feature turned on –  I am not even counting cybercafe and other pubs and public places. But Wi-Fi is also a goldmine for information thieves and hackers. indeed, everybody can connect to the same network, and chances are that there’ll always be a “smart” guy who’ll try to sniff the traffic that goes through a Wi-Fi connection so as to reuse that information later on. Tools exist for that sniffing purposes, and they are easily accessible.

Recommended reading: 7 Tips To Keep Your Laptop Secure While Traveling

– For overcoming some geolocation-limited online resources: those online platforms are becoming more and more popular. Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, BBC iPlayer, .. and the list goes on. A VPN connection is a perfect solution for overcoming those limitations. But another use is also about overriding some censorship that some countries are putting on some public online resources. For example, there were times where sites like Youtube were blocked from China. Here again, VPN solutions come in handy.

Our guesses on the reasons why you do not want to adopt VPN solutions

So, what is refraining you from using a VPN? It is only an attempt, but we think that most people don’t consider using VPN connections for the following reasons:

– Because it’s too cheap: most people believe that an affordable service may not be “worth” it. But there are serious VPN players out there that will tell you the contrary; the list includes HideMyAss, ibVPN (read our complete ibVPN review), PureVPN, Private Internet Access (read our comprehensive PrivateInternetAccess review), NordVPN or IPVanish.

– It’s too complicated to setup: well, I fully understand that the protocols behind VPN aren’t sexy enough. However, most of them install like a charm since they come with installers. All you have to do is to launch the installer and enter the credentials.

– Because you don’t care about it: well, I do not argue against that.

As you have seen, those are only guesses, and we’re sure you have some other reasons (or you may want to rephrase it differently).

What is refraining you from using a VPN? Let us know in the comments below.