Why limit yourself?

Let’s turn things the other way round. Let’s suppose that you have already invested (or are willing to invest) into a VPN subscription (ExpressVPN, ibVPN, HideMyAss, NordVPN or PureVPN are great options by the way). You may have bought the VPN so as to watch Hulu or watch BBC iPlayer while you are on the go.

But my question to you is: why should you limit yourself to those “usual” service when there’s a lot more to discover. You’ve already paid the subscription, haven’t you? So there’s no additional fee to pay for watching/doing something else (unless you want to access some premium services).

So here are few things to do with VPN subscription:

Overcome internet censorship

Some regular sites like Facebook, Youtube or Twitter can’t be accessed from your computer due to some censorship? Why not try to overcome it with a VPN solution. If that doesn’t work, go for a proxy solution (that are now usually sold with your VPN subscription).

Watch movies

Here you can access services like Hulu or Netflix. In some countries, services like Youtube’s Vevo (or even the simple Youtube) can’t be accessed. A VPN solution is the right solution.

Watch TV

Watch TV (or catch-up with some missed episode of your favorite series): in the UK, the usual platform for watching TV online is BBC’s iPlayer. But you also have Channel4’s programs that you can watch on 4oD. Zattoo is also an online TV solution where you can watch actual TV shows from multiple TV stations by broadcasting it live.

Listen to online radio

Listen to online radio: Pandora is a great resource for that. But then you can also service like Spotify that delivers great music (from pop-stars to alternative music).

Use Chatroulette

Have fun, meet people and play games online: Have fun with Chatroulette.

Unblock VoIP applications

You probably have those VoIP applications already installed on your computer so as to ease the communications when traveling. However, in some countries, those VoIP applications work no more. This is where a VPN solution may come handy.

This list isn’t surely exhaustive, but you get the idea. With a simple VPN subscription or a PS3 proxy, you open new horizons and can access a lot of online services that were only meant for residents of specific countries. And in case you’re worried about the subscription scheme, you may be interested in knowing that you can only buy for a one month access so as to check if you want to renew it or not.

Anyway, you’ve now opened your eyes to what can be done with the VPN solution you’ve just bought. And in case you haven’t bought it yet, you now have a broader view of what can be done.

What are the things to do with VPN subscription? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

The check-in feature

Foursquare has made the check-in feature popular: in fact, this is a function that lets you tell your friends (mainly) where you are. Then Twitter has also added the ability to add GPS position to your tweets (provided you are using a GPS-enabled device or phone).

As if that wasn’t enough to bring the check-in feature into the mainstream, Facebook has implemented Facebook places where not only can you indicate where you are, but you can even tell who are the friends you are hanging out with.

As you may guess, those social media platforms have become their own intelligence entity: if you have checked in to your favorite restaurant, chances are that you are not at home so they may want to try “visiting” you.

Is it safe?

So when a social media user is bragging about his awesome holidays on Facebook, for example, burglars just go to their profile and use some other intelligence approach to identify their house. Check this news report on how burglars are using Facebook updates to rob a home. Gone are the old days where burglars would buy information from postman and milkman so as to know who’s gone on holiday: they are now leveraging new technology.

Have you ever accepted friend requests on Facebook from people you barely know?

Now, let’s go deeper. Have you ever accepted friend requests on Facebook from people you barely know (or you don’t even know)? If it ever happened to you, then be careful about what you say on your status updates as, by default on Facebook, your friends happen to see all your status updates. So when you say you’re going out for the night to see a band playing, for example, it’s like telling a burglar: “here is the key to my house”. Don’t believe me? Check this “burglar in progress” video capture where the woman noted that “the burglar was my friend on Facebook”

So what is the takeaway from this video?

The most obvious thing is: don’t let everybody know when you’re going out. This couple has updated their Facebook status thereby allowing everybody to know where they are going to be, and how much time is it going to take.

Especially, if you are a smartphone user and your phone has some kind of GPS feature (or sometimes your GSM cell network can be enough), be careful when you are using applications like Twitter, Facebook, or Foursquare as they have some features where your GPS coordinates are attached to the updates that you make. Well, this feature can become handy if you are taking photos of the places you travel to (as it will exactly indicate where the photo has been taken), but, please, just don’t post those photos and updates in real-time: you’ll save yourself from a lot of troubles by doing so.

Do you know other case studies about how the use of social media can be used by bad guys to invade your privacy? If so, feel free to share them in the comment section.

I wonder how is the Facebook user value calculated?

I understand that Facebook sells ads and that’s how it mainly generates revenues. But at the same time, when you read that General  Electrics, a big industry player in the US,  just withdrawn a $10 million Facebook ad budget because they were not convinced about the efficiency of the media, I can’t help but wonder.

So could it be that Facebook has some other hidden values that we, as lambda users, can’t figure out? I’m no financial guru, but I can do simple maths. And that simple maths tells me that every Facebook account has generated $16. Simple math I said, since, if we consider that Facebook has probably reached 1 billion users and that the IPO has been valued at $16 billion, then we get $16/user. Frankly speaking, I don’t know how to put this figure into perspective.

Google user vs Facebook user comparison

Let’s try to find some comparison, just for the sake of it. On another article, I told you that Google values your private data at $25. With that in mind, can we say that Facebook values similar data at $16? This is oversimplifying, and I know this is such a crazy comparison, but this is the only example that came to my mind so far. Digging further, we can also think about the $1 billion acquisition of Instagr.am by Facebook that was done recently. But at least, on Instagr.am, there’s not that much sensitive private information that we are actually sharing (at least before it got integrated into Facebook and other online identities).

Has the Facebook user-base been sold at $16 billion?

This brings me back to my initial question: has the Facebook user-base been sold at $16 billion? We also have to take into consideration other assets (infrastructures, human resources, patents, …), but still: user-base and user activities are what makes Facebook so powerful- a Facebook without users is just a meaningless empty blue box.

I can imagine that Facebook apps can eventually sell: but from my understanding, Apps get paid via ads. I also know that Facebook has recently been pushing for paid ads that will encrust into the user’s timeline. But as a user of Facebook, have you ever clicked those paid ads? Probably yes, probably no.

One thing’s for sure: Facebook has a lot of private info

Despite all of this, one thing’s for sure: Facebook has gathered a lot of private information on a billion people all around the world, which is 1/7^th of the total population in the world. Ads probably aren’t the only way to market this database.  I’m sure some smart people out there have found new ways to monetize that huge database instead of relying on an old-and-tested ad-based revenue stream (which still pays, I do agree). But if we reconsider Google’s offer who’s ready to pay $25 for accessing one user’s internet history, I just can’t help but think that there’s a price for everything, and $25 is quite a big investment if you multiply it by millions of users.

Now what? As Facebook users, we’ve been sold for $16? What’s your view on the Facebook user value?  After all, Facebook users are at the heart of this business (as it is common with every social media venture out there). Does it surprise you? Do you think it’s fair enough? Feel free to comment.

Is it still possible to track how and where my personal information is shared/ stored?

This is a question that I asked myself lately. Indeed, this has become very obvious to me that I no more have control over how the different online accounts I have are tied together.

Let’s take a recent example: I’ve used Google Chrome for a while along with other browsers (mainly Firefox). Each time I go on Google, on the upper-right corner, there’s a very well-crafted invitation saying something like “not signed to Google Chrome yet, you’re missing something.”

I must admit that it’s very well copy-written: it raises my curiosity, and the call-to-action is very clear: I only have to associate the Google Chrome account to my Gmail account. So after months of ignoring that message (or was it shorter than that?), I finally decided to check what’s at the other side of the fence (ahh, how, we humans, are so curious…).

So, I associated my Google Chrome to my Gmail account so that I can sync every Google Chrome settings I have with different devices: it keeps tracks of the autofill, password, extensions, and so on and so forth … Well, this may be a great feature indeed, since I use Chrome on different computers (or at least from the Chrome I use on my Windows 7, and the one I use with my Ubuntu Precise 12.04). I was so “pleased” that I almost missed the point that for that system to work, my passwords need to be stored somewhere in the cloud.

My passwords are now stored in the Cloud. Should I be worried?

Well, heck, Google Chrome has a paragraph about passwords, where it says that they are encrypted, but the truth of the matter is: I’ve just allowed Google to store my password on its servers.

Should I be worried? Definitely yes. I unchecked the option to store my password so that Google Chrome can remember it, but I’m sure most users won’t even go and check out what they’ve allowed Google to do.

This is just one example in fact, but the same thing applies to other platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Apple and another plethora of platforms. Remember for example whenever you want to use your Facebook account for commenting on popular (or not so popular) website, it always asks for some “permissions”: but since you so want to read that article or access that online resource, you don’t even care about the questions, all you want to click on is the “allow” button? Isn’t it right? The same thing applies when we click on the “Agree” button on all those “End-User License Agreement” on every software that we install on our computer: raise the hand for those who read and took the time to evaluate those EULA…. I bet there’ll only be 1% of people out there.

Frankly speaking, I have to admit that this online identity issue has become such a spaghetti to me that I can’t tell anymore where I’ve “accepted” to store some information about me. The only thing that keeps my mind quiet is that I always take for granted that everything I publish on any place on the internet is something I won’t be ashamed of.

What about you? How do you track online info? How do you manage your online identity?

Let us know in the comments below.

He doesn’t want your online activities to open some backdoor for viruses and Trojan horses. Why is that? In fact, if your company’s workstation is infected, or has been hacked, the in-house IT guy will have hard times mitigating the collateral damages which includes: loss of your data (let’s hope you had a good and tested data backup procedure applied), network congestion (a pirated computer usually uses so much network traffic that it is a good practice to disconnect it immediately so as to keep the other users in a satisfying working environment).

Why commenting with your Facebook ID is a bad idea?

Those are all about your data and eventually your computer, but what about your online privacy when commenting on blogs and forums with your Facebook ID?

Ok,  this one goes against all the trends. You may have noticed that most of the popular (and not-so-popular) websites and blogs allow you to comment by using your Facebook credentials. From first approach, commenting via your Facebook account seems to be a very good option: you don’t have to register anymore on this site (which means, no more new credentials and password to remember)- but this also means that you are allowing this website to access other information about you that you have published on Facebook.

This may not seem obvious but, often, when it’s the first time that you comment on a website from your Facebook account, it is asking you a weird question that usually reads as “allow website XXX to do some things and access some data from your Facebook profiles.” I don’t know about you, but although I think it’s right from the application developers to warn me (or inform me) about the things such website can do on my Facebook profile, I’m never sure to what extent that website can access the info I have on Facebook. And I am sure; you don’t have any clue about it too.

And that’s my point …

Most of the people publish a lot of things about them on Facebook, and I am still convinced that Facebook can’t be trusted when it comes to privacy settings. As they are applying some changes to their security settings, users are lost. I just gave up adjusting my Facebook privacy settings and consider that anything I publish on it is considered public.

So let’s get back to the issue on commenting with your Facebook ID: the pre-Facebook commenting systems only needed a pseudo, an e-mail address and eventually a website address to “give you a face.” It has then evolved to some gravatars (e-mails associated with a picture). Up to there: everything was fine. Most people gave fake names and e-mail addresses – and no one cares about who’s behind that pseudo.

Now with Facebook commenting, not only do you provide your Facebook account, but you are also giving away a lot of information about you and your friends. And, from my point of view, this means the following: by commenting on such site, not only do you voice your opinion on the comment section, but you are also giving away a lot of information about you than the usual e-mail address and pseudo.

What do you think about commenting with your Facebook ID? Do you think I’m paranoiac? Voice your ideas in the comment system.

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?

Haven’t heard about it yet? That’s fine. The goal of How-to-hide-ip isn’t to only to show you how to do it. Anyway, so as to understand the principles and then explain how secure it is, let’s just give an outline of how it works.

Special offer from GSM telco operators

In most countries, since Facebook is such a popular magnet, most GSM telco operators have set up a special offer where their customers can access for free the mobile version of Facebook via a specific link (usually 0.facebook.com). Telcos are so keen on attracting more customers – usually, young people who are addicted to this social network: giving those people an opportunity to access for free Facebook from their mobile is such an interesting offer that they can combine with other features, usually SMS.

At a Telco’s side, they are setting up specific accounting/authorization/authentication scheme so that the customers who subscribed to the “free Facebook” offer can only access the 0.facebook.com site. However, in the phreaking world, they’ve found a trick to circumvent this limitation. This trick relies on proxies and Opera mini handler.

Proxies and Opera Mini Handler

What is interesting for our readers is that the trick relies on proxies. Well, to be frank, there’s a cat-and-mouse game between the phreakers and the GSM Telco as finding the best proxy to use is like a treasure trove quest. But anyway, we all know how proxies work, right?

For those who don’t, you set up your browser (for our case, we use Opera Mini browser for mobile phones), so that it uses a distant proxy server for processing most of its internet requests. In other words, you specifically request that every internet packet that you are issuing be redirected first to some kind of gateway, who will rewrite your internet request before delivering it.

The good thing

The good thing is: proxies can usually help you circumvent some limitations that your internet service provider has set up for you (which is the case for us here). But the bad thing is, you give the proxy server the power to see whatever you’ll be doing online.

As I told earlier, not only will the proxy be able to see all your internet traffic, but since you’ll have to frequently change your proxy server (hey, the Telco’s network administrators are also doing their work, so they usually block the popular proxies that phreakers are commonly using). So at the end of the day, by choosing to get some free internet access from your mobile phone, you may end-up allowing some of those proxies (that you don’t even know, finally) to have access to some (or most) of the data available on your mobile phones.

Conclusion

Now think about it a second: most people don’t have the habit of keeping their phone updated with the latest security patches – however, in order to run this Opera Mini Handler, your phone needs to be able to run Java (which means that other programs can also be run on the same phone) – what if some malware is injected into your phone?

At the end of the day, it all comes down to the assertion “there’s no free beer” – things are given to you for free, but there must be some untold reasons behind it. What do you think those reasons are?

In fact, by too frequently adding some changes to their privacy settings, Facebook is addressing their users concern. However, by giving more control to the users, things seem to be worse as most of Facebook users are not even aware of the default settings for their account. While Facebook can say that they implemented solutions to strengthen privacy issues, users are more and more lost. While some “advanced” Facebook users are trying to help their peers by indicating what to do to increase their security settings, most users adopt few principles that, at the end of the day, do make sense.

My recommended attitude toward managing Facebook privacy settings

Personally, from the beginning, and independently of what privacy settings Facebook have implemented, I just consider that anything that is published on Facebook falls into the public domain, which means that anybody can see and eventually use it. Most of Facebook users would come out with some tips and tricks to restrict access to my Facebook profile (and they probably are right), but I’m convinced that without going through a major redesign, Facebook won’t convince me that they have addressed all the privacy issues.

Is Facebook addressing privacy concerns?

The way I see things is simple: Facebook has brought ad-hoc changes so as to address users’ complains, or in order to copy other platforms interesting features (see Google Plus granular control of who can see your posts). But the Facebook platform itself wasn’t conceived as a target-oriented publishing platform.

If we take the analogy with Microsoft Windows platform: viruses are king on this platform since the platform wasn’t initially designed with security in mind, and despite all the anti-virus solutions that exist everywhere, the fact remains the same: Windows isn’t a secure-enough platform. The same case applies for Facebook: it was initially conceived to show-off publicly whatever you want to share, as opposed to Google Plus for example, who was conceived from the beginning with granular control in mind.

Don’t get me wrong, however, I know Facebook is working on improving their privacy settings, but can I ask you a question? Raise your hand if you are ever able to catch-up with all of Facebook updates. Almost every week, you can see people, blogs, and mainstream media talking about a new feature, but whoever implement them as soon as they read it? It’s more than common that some “old” information updates only reach Facebook users months later.

What if you’ve been hacked in between?

How do you revert back? The most common solution that is given to users is to change their Facebook password – but how can it help you recovering one of your private photos that have been copied to another Facebook user’s computer? It’s almost useless. That’s why I always say: if you think any information that you want to post on Facebook can’t fall into the public domain field, just don’t publish it. I know, for example, that you can set some settings whereby you can limit it so that only your friends can see it: but how can you be sure about it?

Think again about it: can you actually be sure that it’s actually protected?

As I said earlier, those are my perceptions of how secure Facebook is. I know there are users out there who don’t agree with my point of view. Feel free to raise your voice on the comment system. We will then help educate Facebook users to get more control of their privacy on this popular platform.