• Overcome censorship in countries like China, Iran, UAE, etc.
• Access blocked and geo-restricted websites
• Watch Hulu.com, Pandora.com, ABC.com, BBC.co.uk from anywhere
• Protect yourself from snoopers at Wi-Fi hotspots, hotels, airports, corporate offices and ISP hubs.
• Hide your IP address for your privacy online

IPREDator

World’s most famous BitTorrent network ThePirateBay launched in June 2009 its own VPN service. Unlike any other VPN service, IPREDATOR assures that no user activity logs of any kind are stored. The VPN service was designed to give you a private and 100% secure internet access. It uses 128bit encryption to make sure that no one, not even your IPS, is able to peek in your data transfers.

The name of the service mocks the Swedish Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) legislation which empowers copyright holders to get personal details of file-sharing users from ISP’s.

>> IPREDator

HideIpVPN

HideIpVPN was launched in September 2009 and it’s a very popular VPN service, according to Hide-IP-Tools.com. The service hides your IP address (using VPN technology) and exposes UK or US IP addresses instead of your real one. This allows you to unblock a lost of restricted sites and protect your online privacy.

One of the most appreciated features of HideIpVPN service is that it offers 100 free accounts each month.

>> HideIpVPN]

AceVPN

Ace VPN is a VPN service that you can use to privately and securely surf and download on the internet without leaving a trace and/or being tracked. Besides the free version that is by invitation only, Ace VPN offers a premium service for $5/month. AceVPN allows P2P traffic only for premium accounts.

AceVPN requests their users to limit the upload and the download speed to 100kbps so that it does not affect other users on the network.

>> AceVPN

ItsHidden

ItsHidden is a free VPN that works on BitTorrent (BT) traffic including uploading and downloading transfer. Thus, it’s useful for users who torrent traffic been throttled by their ISP, or users who need to hide for anti-piracy organizations from sharing copyrighted materials.

>> ItsHidden

TheFreeVPN

TheFreeVPN is a free service that lets users surf the web privately also allowing them to bypass internet censorship. Unfortunately, it comes with a price: annoying ads. You can choose from 3 US servers (one special for watching Hulu), 3 UK servers and 1 Canada server (this is the only free Canada VPN that I know!).

>> TheFreeVPN – No longer available in the list of VPN services 2009.

HideMyAss

HideMyAss Pro VPN is one of the best VPN services 2009 as it is an easy to use application which anonymously encrypts your entire internet connection. The tool automatically works with any application or protocol including p2p/bit-torrent.

>> HideMyAss

12vpn

12vpn is a reliable VPN service with three server locations for OpenVPN, PPTP, and L2TP setups, based in the UK and US. What I like most about 12vpn is that you can switch servers, if you wish, by logging in to your account area and selecting another, but 12vpn maintains that it auto-selects the best choice for you based on your location.

>> 12vpn

The name of the service mocks the new Swedish Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) legislation which empowers copyright holders to get personal details of file-sharing users from ISP’s. The release of IPREDator is scheduled exactly on the same date when IPRED gets into effect.

IPREDator is a network service that makes people online more anonymous using a VPN. It will cost about 5 EUR a month. They say about their service: “the network is under our control. not theirs. the pirate bay likes and knows real optimism. and waffles.“

The service is still in beta

The service is available only for the first 3000 people on the beta-list. Gradually more people will be invited but right knows there are 180.000 (wow!) people in the queue. They estimate it will take about a month to make the service available for all of them. After that, the service will be public (i.e. everyone will be able to subscribe and use the service).

Why Pirate Bay VPN?

IPREDator comes in response to the introduction of Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) legislation which empowers copyright holders to get personal details of file-sharing users from ISP’s. The release of IPREDator was initially scheduled exactly on the same date when IPRED got into effect (1st of April 2009).

According to TorrentFreak, the IPREDATOR service would be more secure than other virtual private networks (VPN), by encrypting a user’s traffic stream. This way, it is theoretically invulnerable to interception by a local ISP or intermediate carriers.

“The weak link in any VPN/anonymity service is always their willingness (or otherwise) to hand over your customer data when pressured under the law. However, with IPREDATOR this should not be an issue since the service is promising to keep no logs of user activity whatsoever,” TorrentFreak said.

The Pirate Bay Trial: Defendants Found Guilty

On Friday, 17th of April, a court in Sweden found four members of the Pirate Bay guilty of breaking Swedish copyright laws and sentenced them to a year in prison and a $3.6 million fine. Learn about the Pirate Bay trial.

The four men – Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundström -were found guilty of having made 33 copyright-protected files accessible for illegal file sharing via the Piratebay.org Web site. Warg and Neij are the founders of The Pirate Bay. Sunde is a programmer and a spokesman there, and Lundström offered technical services to the site in 2005.

The Pirate Bay and its lawyers will appeal the verdict, and the site will continue to function normally during the appeals procedures.

The legislation was based on the European Union’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED). During the first day, it was in force, Swedish internet traffic dropped by a third.

IPREDator Pros & Cons

We have compiled a list of pros and cons for the IPredator VPN service.

IPREDator Pros

• It works! IPREDator does what it says: provides total online anonymity and security. Suitable for torrents.
• The speed is great! Now that it seems to be stabilized, the service provides a fast online connection. As the servers are located in Sweden, that may vary, depending on your location.
• Works on iPhone
• All ports are forwarded
• Easy to install
• The price is acceptable (60 euro/year) compared to other VPN services.

IPREDator Cons

• Provides only Swedish IP. This makes IPREDator no suitable to unblock Hulu, Pandora and other sites that are restricted to users outside the US. The same applies to BCC iPlayer.
• Basic site and service. The site (too) simple and not very nice looking. No fancy design.
• Only support PPTP
• Limited use of iPhone due to its Swedish IP address(es)

IPREDator – Good or Bad?

Here, at How-to-hide-ip, there were some interesting, not favorable, comments regarding IPREDator. I’ll just cite Fausty from a comment on 7 VPN Services Launched in 2009:

Just to clarify, iPredator is NOT a new service. It’s just Relakks, with a new name stuck on top of it – as confirmed by Sunde after we caught them trying to pass it off as “new.” [..]

Additionally, Sunde has admitted that because the old Relakks network (which was abandoned, with customer funds disappearing, in 2008 by whoever owns it – they’ve never explained any of that) is built on PPTP proprietary VPN tools, that “IPREDator is very much a political statement more than anything else.” That’s right, this “privacy service” uses technology that’s so badly broken it can’t even promise to protect privacy! Sunde only made this admission after I demanded he justify how they could put forth the re-animated Relakks stuff as a viable “privacy service” despite the many flaws exposed in it.

What do you think of Ipredator released? Have you tried it? Is it a good service? Would you recommend to others?

Pirate Bay VPN (IPredator) alternatives

If you were not lucky to be on the beta list you may still use a VPN service.

There are plenty of good VPN providers that you can use. They offer excellent speed and connection reliability. Here are several such VPN services that I recommend at this time:

Another alternative is to subscribe to a VPN service that offers a free trial. You may find here a list.

>> IPREDator | The Pirate Bay Blog

If you are seeking total online anonymity then VPN services are the right way to go. There are several free such services, but as anything free, they come with significant drawbacks (a lot of ads, slow connection speed, etc.).

What if you decide to pay for a premium VPN service? What are your options if you don’t have a credit card as most of the internet users from China, India, etc. don’t. Then, you should use PayPal. Here are the steps you could follow. This is not going to take you 5 minutes, maybe 1 week or 1 month, but it’s a working solution.

1. Create a PayPal account

Go to PayPal.com and create an account. Choose the Personal account and fill in the required info. My advice is to use an email address that you plan to use for a longer period of time. After your account is ready to proceed to the next step.

2. Fill your PayPal account with money

This is the most difficult step, but with a little bit of effort, you should be able to do it. The idea is that you need money to pay for the service and you have to work for them.

There are plenty of forums that offer simple online jobs that can be performed by (almost) anyone. Go, for example, on DigitalPoint forums, to the Services section, and browse for threads with the subjects containing WTH (Want To Hire) string. If you find something interesting that you think you could do, create an account, send a message to the job poster and … start working.

You should be able to easily do $10-20/month that would be enough to proceed to the next step.

3. Find a VPN service that accepts PayPal

There are VPN services that do not accept PayPal payments like Relakks, IPredator, BananaVPN, etc., but others do. Here are 6 such services:

• HideMyAss – from $11.32/month
• ibVPN – from $4.95/month
• NordVPN
• ExpressVPN
• PureVPN

That’s it! Good luck and keep me up to date on your progress!