If you want to grab Samsung Galaxy Alpha for yourself, it is the right time to have one because it will disappear from the market soon — why? Samsung has decided to discontinue it’s one of the prettiest phone for cheaper alternatives.
It’s about time when Samsung realised that just because it is company’s first metal frame smartphone, it can’t compete with other smartphones in high-end segments while housing the inferior specs and poor battery life than the competitors.
Just after a few brief months of introduction, the Alpha is reportedly being supplanted by its successor Galaxy A5, which will take over as the leading Samsung handset for the mid-range market.
Samsung says these are the slimmest smartphones it’s ever made. Despite housing a 5-inch display, the A5 is just 6.7mm (0.26 inches) thick, enough to best the iPhone 6. The A3 matches Apple’s latest flagship at 6.9mm (0.27 inches), though it’s got a smaller 4.5-inch qHD screen.
Both phones are powered by a quad-core 1.2GHz processor; the A5’s got 2GB of RAM inside, but the A3’s got half that. The A5 also wins out with a slightly better 13-megapixel camera compared to the 8-megapixel rear camera on the A3. Both phones have a plethora of selfie modes and Samsung’s even built in a mode that can automatically churn out GIFs.
The 5-inch A5 is a continuation of the Alpha’s design philosophy, emphasizing thinness and higher-quality metal construction, though it opts for a tamer spec sheet that will allow it to be priced at a more competitive 400,000 won (roughly $360). The report states that the A5 will be arriving in Samsung’s home country in January or February, while the Galaxy Alpha will be phased out as production ramps down once the current inventory of materials is exhausted.
In the world of online payment processing, there’s no way to get anywhere without passing through a payment gateway. These are the merchant services that authorize credit card payments to your merchant account and securely process them; although, as noted by IT World, your payment processor will often be different from your payment gateway, this is also assigned by your merchant service provider and can be seen as one of the many features under the merchant service umbrella.
In order to do business online — or with credit cards at all—you need to have an active merchant ID with your payment gateway service of choice, but that means making the choice to start with.
What makes one payment gateway better or worse than another, and how do you tell which one works best for you? In this case, it’s all about fees and features. The first thing any entrepreneur wants to know when investing in a new piece of equipment or new service is how much it costs, and the first thing every entrepreneur needs to know is whether or not the investment will work with their business. So what aspects of payment gateways vary from service to service? Find out before you make your choice.
All payment gateways offer protection features, but you can be on the lookout specifically for features to prevent fraud. Always check for reviews and news about your favored merchant service company and make sure that they’re generally well-received and appreciated by their clientele.
You can also use this research time to look for alternate payment options. When it comes to online payment services, credit cards are definitely king—but they’re not the only game in town. According to CommerceGateway.info, if you choose the right payment gateway you can also accept eChecks, which provides shoppers an alternative to using a credit card. Until fairly recently this was the preferred option for subscription services, so depending on your target demographic you may want to look into this option. Also, make sure that your payment gateway can accept all major credit cards, and any other option that may arise with your clientele such as debit and dinner cards.
Sales Volume
Before you choose a merchant services plan, you need to have a projected sales volume. Do research into your industry, figure out the average final price for an order and keep that in mind when you go to find a plan that works for you. Remember that most online businesses start off a bit slow, and ramp up over time with diligence in marketing via social media and other online venues, so don’t worry if you’re not reaching your projections from day one.
Likewise, if you find yourself consistently outdoing your daily projections, be prepared to contact your merchant service provider and see about upgrading your plan—fees, both monthly and per transaction, vary depending on how much you actually sell in a given period. Keep an eye on your sales and your projections to find your true average, and round up to find your monthly projection. You’ll also need to build yourself a “safety net” in that estimate, for high-volume seasons; this will help you avoid penalties and extra processing fees.
Fee for Services
Speaking of fees, all payment gateways charge something. Whether it’s a percentage off each sale, a monthly fee or both, factor that into your budget. Establish how much you’re comfortable paying to be able to sell your project, and look for a provider that fits your needs close to your limit.
One common mistake, especially in sole proprietors, is to choose the payment gateway with the lowest overall fees. This may seem like a good idea when you’re first starting out, but you may find yourself with limited features and growth opportunities if you always opt for the cheapest option. Fees should definitely be a deciding factor in choosing your merchant services, but it should never be the only factor. Again, do the research and make sure the service you’re looking at does everything you need it to, and does it all the time.
Best Options
Some of the favorite payment gateways and merchant services available for online businesses include Authorize.net, PayPal and Verisign—but that’s not the end of it by far. While TopTenReviews.com ranks Flagship Merchant Services as their number one merchant service provider, this isn’t a one size fits all solution. Many online retail services have a list of preferred payment gateways, so if you intend to go live through a service like Shopify, make sure your chosen gateway is on the list before you buy in for a year of service. Understanding your needs may be a bit difficult at the outset, especially when it comes to sales estimates for a business that isn’t open yet, but merchant service providers are usually happy to provide assistance in choosing the right plan for your business. The worst that happens is you outdo your projections in sales and have to upgrade your plan!
The whole market is shifting and just as everyone is thinking of getting ahead in the tech race, why would anyone assume that Samsung will stop. Recently the company acquired a new company called Proximal Data, which is a software developer related to the server market.
Proximal was one picked for the honor by Samsung’s ownership, because the software is unique in the way it caches Input/Output in the virtual part of the server and thus helps in boosting the SSD market response. Seems samsung is really excited to earn its name in the solid state device market along with Servers.
All the other financial details of this deal were kept private. Proximal which is centrally based in San Diego, California has really developed something new here. According to a product briefing, the software works in collaboration with other server virtualization softwares like the VMware. Its AutoCache service program attatches itself into the softwares and keeps a constant eye on all the input and output. Out of these, the most used ones are cached directly in the local PCIe flash card or the SSD, to provide faster access to data.
But jst doing tht is not enough. Now the hot I/O are stored, there is the need of an intelligence embedded in the circuitry to read and thus provide the server with required data streams directly from cache without any storage access permissions.
CEO of Proximal Data, Rory Bolt is taking the high road with this deal as he positively hopes that the this deal will enhance the Autocache software in the future along with more products on the enterprise storage side. Rory is a big name in the storage and software market, as he has been previously involved in three startups including the enterprise class data protection software company named Avamar technologies, sold to EMC in 2006.
There is no doubt that this deal with help Samsung expand its SSD business since the software mainly addresses to the I/O Bottleneck problems which is a very big problem in virtual server environments. AutoCache very efficiently manages all the cache I/O with minimizing the use of Guest OS resources, which is really good thing in the business. Proximal works with standard flash cards or SSD in the virtual servers such as Microsoft Hyper-v or VMware ESXi.
This is not allegedly the first time that Samsung has applied the same strategy as other tech giants are using like Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. which simply includes buying out the companies and services who could be used for company’s future. Samsung bought “Nvelo”, another company based in Santa Clara, California in 2012 which is specialized in SSD caching and for the better part of the year all its new SSD have been using its technology.
For Samsung, as the history shows, all the other software seem like a big key factor in differentiating which company is better than others, as basically Samsung belongs to the hardware market, and yet the company is also focusing at the same time on newer chip level technologies.
It even made it clear that they have started the mass production of its 3 dimensional vertical NAND flash memory to be used in the SSDs, which provided much higher storage density (32 vertically stacked cells) almost up to a total of 128 GBs per chip.
Awesome! seems not that much of a surprise with the way the company is looking forward to newer and newer technologies. What comes out of this new deal, time will sure show us, till then Good luck to Samsung.
Share what you think about this new advancement, we are eager to hear. Comment below or post at www.facebook.com/digitfreak
Today every tech savvy and DigitFreak reader are well aware of the fact that pretty much everything that we do on the internet is being logged or monitored. However, we are not frightened of these basic privacy threats because we Freak’s are good at cloaking our movements over the virtual world.
To prevent the online snooping and hide our identity on the internet, millions of people have signed up to a VPN service. Unfortunately, not all VPN services are as anonymous as they claim.
There are multiple methods to hide your identity over the internet, but using a VPN server is the cheapest service that can effectively make your presence almost untraceable on the internet. It should be noted that efficiency of a given method varies according to the service provider and the way you implement them.
I did explained it on the previous VPN review, but I will quote it again.
For example, if you are using a VPN service from Provider X and Provider Y – you may end up with different service quality and most importantly, the security of your identity over the internet. As mentioned earlier, not all service providers are honest and give you the total value for money.
Most of them do provide facilities from cheap data centers and often overload their servers. We also mentioned earlier that newer VPN service provider has faster servers and better services compared to some old and established companies. New companies have less crowded servers and latest technology to balance the traffic over their data centers.
How I found HideIPVPN:
I found an emerging VPN service provider (CactusVPN) few weeks ago, and had to keep looking for other services out their for DigitFreak readers.
You don’t need to be worried about any fraudulent websites, because we constantly test these websites and review their services so that you don’t end up being one of their victims.
While searching over the internet, one name that popped over and over again was — HideIPVPN. Since, we already spent some money to subscribe an annual plan on CactusVPN for my previous review, we couldn’t go for another subscription.
We went to their website and asked for a trial account to review their services on our website. This article not sponsored or requested by HideIPVPN, however they were happy to lend out 1 month free trial account for this review.
Plans and Pricing:
The company offers many exciting packages to choose from, which ranges from $5.99 to $11.95, if opted for monthly package. The subscription package can be little cheaper if you go for the annual subscription. They offer 1 Unlimited VPN Plan (which includes it all) with your choice of three term periods; 1, 6 or 12 months.
What does it include?
Unlimited Bandwidth, Uncapped Speed
Advance Easy-to-Use Software
Compatible w/ Phones & Tablets
New IP every time you connect
Provides a layer of security and anonymity
Protects you by hiding your real IP address
Secure connection between your PC and the Internet (128-2048bit)
Access sites restricted to US and UK residents
Anonymous Internet Surfing
Security for Hotspot Wireless Access Users
Unblock all VOIP Applications include Skype
Tip: Try HideIPVPN for 3 Days to see if it’s right for you. If you like it, upgrade to a longer term and save! If you find it’s not for you, you’re covered by their 3-Day Money-Back Guarantee.
You can go for any of the packages, based on your personal preference and why you want to get a VPN service in the first place. If you want to unblock websites based in US, you would go for “US VPN.” There are multiple countries you can choose from – Germany, UK, US and Canada can be subscribed individually, but NL or DE server subscription requires you to subscribe to one of the multi server package. Keep in mind, Most VPN providers support P2P on NL or DE servers only because it is illegal in both UK and US.
HideIPVPN has special package just for p2p transfers which allows P2P transfers over their network. This is the good thing, because most of the companies don’t specifies P2P support on their website. We at DigitFreak always support P2P community, so its quite obvious that we tend to bend towards this feature.
If you want to browse internet anonymously, but want to unblock websites as well — you don’t have to lookout for two different service providers for VPN and smart DNS service. You can simply opt for their combined package, which is designed for users like us.
Client Area:
Once you buy any of their VPN package, you’ll receive your account details by email. Login to your account with the email and password to access client area. The client area dashboard is neat and elegant, you can access useful contents and necessary links in one place.Please Note that Login details for client area and VPN service are different. To access VPN/Smart DNS service you must have a unique key to login. You can find these details in the client area.
Testing HideIPVPN software:
The easiest way to access their service is by their official software, which can be downloaded from their website for free. It is only available for Windows and Mac atm, for Linux you will have to configure the VPN service manually. When I installed the application on my computer, it felt very similar to CactusVPN (that we reviewed earlier) software. You can manage your Smart DNS and VPN service in one window.
There are two tabs for VPN and Smart DNS, which is used to manage or connect to the service you need to use. If you subscribed for VPN+Smart DNS package, you can use either of the service at a time. The account details are provided in the emails sent by the company, when you first registered on the website. You can also find these details in client area when you sign in to their official website.
Using HideIPVPN software is as simple as 1,2,3.
As is the case with other VPN service providers, HideIPVPN offers PPTP, SSTP, L2Tp/IPSec and OpenVPN security protocols. No surprises here, but what is outstanding to note is that it has gone ahead and implemented a new VPN protocol. However, they lack the latest military grade encryption – SoftEther, that is practically untraceable — which HideIPVPN promised to implement in near future.
There are also a handful of settings, which comes really handy while using the software to connect to the VPN servers. You can manage the startup behavior and connection settings on this tab, which governs the behavior of the software under these conditions.
The truly useful feature of the software is the new revolutionary App Killeroption, which is built into the application. You can add the software on this tab, which makes sure that the software included here are terminated when connection to VPN server drops due to some reason. The HideIPVPN application will terminate the software included in this list and restart them once reconnected to the server. This is really useful feature for those who take security very seriously.
Instead of the standard 40-80% customary drop in available ISP speed with other VPN companies, HideIPVPN was able to tap into almost 80-90% of the available ISP speed. Even we were surprised to find this was possible. This ensured that all streaming media could be viewed without trouble.
Smart DNS is relatively new technology which directs your requests to the proxy server, that is capable of unblocking any website regardless of your Geo-graphical position. Any user who is not currently located within a specific area which has been approved for viewing content available on these Geo-restricted websites will be automatically blocked from using the site freely and prevented from streaming/downloading the content available to permitted users.
This is a very nice feature, because there is negligible speed drop while using the SmartDNS feature provided by the company and you can still access all the region-restricted or blocked media/websites.
Speed Test:
People often ask, how fast is HideIPVPN? The simple answer is it’s fast enough for downloading, streaming videos, and playing online games. HideIPVPN customers give an average rating of 4 out of 5 on speed, which is a very acceptable score. While the speed may vary depending on many factors.
Your connection speed depends on several factors: which protocol you use, which data transport method you select, and your choice of DNS server.
We noticed below average speed drops while connected to the US servers, but UK, NL and DE servers performed quiet well.
Here are the speed test result from our location:
No VPN:
UK Server:
US Server:
NL Server:
DE Server:
uTorrent Speed Test:
Keep it in mind that VPN servers works very differently, as they have to encrypt your data before sending it back to you, which ends up to be a network congestion and throttle the connection speed a little.
In general, the closer you are to VPN server, the better bandwidth you get. As you know VPN connection only in theory is a direct connection between two computers. In reality data (encrypted) is send via many intermediary servers. For some connections less, for some more.
Customer Support:
We rarely had to contact HideIPVPN’s Support, but whenever we did, we always received quick and thorough responses to your questions or issues. A very satisfying experience.
However, HideIPVPN falls slightly behind the top VPN services in so much as it does not provide skype or telephone support for customers. Instead, customers can log in to the client area on the website and use the support ticketing system, live chat or email the company for support.
HideIPVPN currently offers Three Types of Support:
Email Support (Recommended) – We found email to best method to contact either their sales or technical team for support, because it’s much more organized, you can keep everything on record and their response time is usually within an hour or two. They can also address more complicated issues or questions in detail through email.
Live Chat – This is great if you have a quick question or concern about their service. However, their Live Chat is only available 12 hours a day.
1. Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you or a 3rd party to match an IP-address and a time stamp to a user of your service? If so, exactly what information do you hold and for how long?
No do not keep any logs of users activity online. Our customers use shared IP so there is no way to assign specific activity to a single customer.
2. Under what jurisdictions does your company operate and under what exact circumstances will you share the information you hold with a 3rd party?
We operate under US jurisdiction and we would cooperate under US court order.
3. In the event you receive a DMCA take down notice or European equivalent, how are these handled?
I can not imagine why we would get DCMA in the first place as we do not host any content. Simply, there is nothing to take down.
4. Which payment systems do you operate and how are these linked to individual user accounts?
PayPal, credit card, PayPro, Google Wallet and Bitcoin
5. Do you support p2p protocol transfer? If no, why? If yes, how it can be accessed and what security mechanism you have in place to protect your customers?
Yes we do offer P2P and torrent support on NL and DE VPN servers. Depending on the server customers can use one of four different VPN protocols – PPTP, L2TP, OpenVPN and SSTP
It is also worth to mention that our VPN application has a very nice feature – “application killer”. It will shot down app if VPN connection is lost and once it is automatically re-established it will start it back on.
6. What steps are taken when a valid court order requires your company to identify an active user of your service?
If a court order would com in and if we would have sufficient data as to identify user (that is not possible if payment is mad via Bitcoin system) we would have no choice but to comply. But, as we said in point 1 and 2. As we operate under US jurisdiction we do not store any logs as we do not have to. So all we could say (in the worst case) is – Yes, Mr Smith is our customer – and nothing else.
7. What tools are used to monitor and mitigate abuse of your service?
We do not comment on such measures, reasons for this are obvious :-). However if service is abused we will know and account will be closed immediately.
If you want to use our service to stay private and anonymous online – feel free to come to us and we will do all we can to make it happen. Other than that we can not help you. And so that it is clear for everyone – paedophiles don’t even try!
8. What is the most secure VPN connection and encryption algorithm you would recommend to your users?
At this point SSTP, but OpenVPN and L2TP are not bad for a general but secure browsing as well.
9. Do you offer SoftEther protocol. Can you explain how a normal user can be benefited by this protocol and what it really means for end users when security and anonymity is concerned.
It is a military grade security protocol with AES 256-bit and RSA 4096-bit encryption. It is much harder to be detectable by ISP. It will be coming to HideIPVPN at some point in future.
Verdict:
So far we’ve discussed what makes HideIPVPN a great VPN service. However, like any product, HideIPVPN isn’t perfect. Though we found the support (by email, support ticket or live chat) helpful and reasonably efficient, adding live telephone support would make life a lot easier, and result in faster turnover of inquiries.
HideIPVPN offers a 3 days money back guarantee so you can test their full service, and ask for cancellation if not satisfied within the given time frame. They also offer 24 hours trial on VPN services and 7 days trial for SmartDNS. If you are in the market for an affordable, reliable personal VPN with timely support, you should definitely consider HideIPVPN.
HideIPVPN is easy to install and use. The speed is excellent. The pricing concerns us a little, as other VPN providers usually offers their service at standard price of $6.99 or less, but HideIPVPN’s premium service comes at $11.95/month. However, good service always comes at a price – HideIPVPN is p2p friendly and keeps user data secure, they even got a dedicated package just for p2p transfers. Many other VPN providers in this day and age have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to that type of filesharing.
The main negatives to the service are that it is difficult to get a refund for anything other than defective software, while there are currently no servers outside of Europe and North America, and even in those areas, only five countries in total have servers.
We recommend HideIPVPN if your sole purpose is to protect yourself from snoopers, surf blocked websites and stream videos anonymously over your network.
Today anonymity is the rational factor — there is no such thing as 100% privacy on internet. People like Edward Snowden and Jullian Assange has warned us about the current privacy state of a normal person and what “Privacy” actually means to our country.
If someone is monitoring your every move, you must take the primary precautions to get you off the radar. There are multiple methods that makes sure you stay off the grid, but not all of them are equally effective. Also, it should be noted that efficiency of a given method varies according to the service provider and the way you implement them.
For example, if you are using a VPN service from Provider X and Provider Y – you may end up with different service quality and most importantly, the security of your identity over the internet. As mentioned earlier, not all service provides are honest and give you the total value for money.
You don’t need to be worried about any fraudulent websites, because we constantly test these websites and review their services so that you don’t end up being one of their victims.
By now most Internet users are well aware of the fact that pretty much every step they take on the Internet is logged or monitored.
To prevent their IP-addresses from being visible to the rest of the Internet, millions of people have signed up to a VPN service. Using a VPN allows users to use the Internet anonymously and prevent snooping. For instance, you may live in San Francisco, but with a VPN, you can appear to live in Amsterdam, New York, or any number of gateway cities.
We reviewed a popular VPN provider “VPN4ALL” – which offered tunneling your data through their secure military grade network and offering the anonymity of your IP address, both on your computer and mobile phones.
We also got our hands on the Smart DNS service “Unotelly” – which effectively unblocked all the websites on the internet, which couldn’t be accessed otherwise, due to restrictions incorporated by different countries.
Both of the services mentioned above are effective and secure. Smart DNS is fairly new technology, which is capable of unblocking websites, that is inaccessible otherwise. Whereas, VPN is the masking service which hides your original IP address, which is almost untraceable. You’ll usually have to subscribe to two different service providers if you want both of these services (VPN and SmartDNS), specially because popular websites like hulu.com started blocking all the IP addresses registered by these VPN service providers.
What if you can have both of these services under one roof? Yes, the VPN company that we are going to review in this article does exactly that. CactusVPN is one of the emerging company that I came across, when I was searching for the new VPN service providers with good reputation. Usually, new VPN companies provides better service because they have less crowded servers – which is why I always subscribe to these new companies to avail the best service quality while its still available.
I know cactusVPN is a established company and thousands of users are being benefited by their quality service, but despite of that they never clog their servers to overcapacity. I noticed unnoticeable speed drop while using either VPN service or Smart DNS service.
Lets jump to the in-depth review of the company and my experience with their services:
How I found CactusVPN:
When I first searched for a new and emerging vpn service providers, I got a list of dozens of websites. Most of them were established and most popular companies, while others were a internet buzz. I already used many of them, but I wasn’t so pleased with their services. I was looking for a new VPN company, because they are the one who has less crowded servers and thus, providing faster internet speed than its competitor.
CactusVPN is not actually a new company. It was established in 2012 and it has thousands of subscribers, who are satisfied with the service they provide. Given that other top VPN companies has been around since a decade now, we can obviously keep the CactusVPN under the “newbie” category. I was little confused, if I should spend my hard earned cash on a comparatively new company but, I can assure you it was one of the best thing my money was spent on. I can confidently use their service for my subscribed period, which is “1 Year.”
I quickly went to their website, to see how good they actually are. I was about to subscribe to their annual plan, but roaming through their website I picked up on their Customer reviews. I was amazed to see that most of them were positive reviews but, there were some negative feedback as well.
Some customers complained about the speed drop when connected to CactusVPN server, while most of them stated that the service was perfect and delivered the expected quality of service. The speed variation may occur depending on how far you are from the servers. The VPN service cannot be same, depending on the geographical variations.It is true that you cannot figure be 100% sure if they are actually the genuine comments. There is only one way to find out — “Test it yourself!” Don’t worry, I got you covered here. I went straight up and registered to their service for 1 year.
Registration:
CactusVPN is simple and robust service that provides traditional VPN mechanism to hide your online identity and keeps your “privacy” safe from the intruders. The first thing you would need is to get an account on their website. The registration process is simple and you won’t find any hassle while performing it. To make things clear, it is not a free service — you need to subscribe on the monthly, quarterly or yearly basis. (Register here).
Plans and Pricing:
CactusVPN offers several exciting packages to choose from. You’ll find that they sort their subscription options based on the country their servers are located. For US, UK and NL servers, it’s $4.99/mo each. You can go for any of the package, based on your personal preference and why you want to get a VPN service at the first place. If you want to unblock websites based in US, you would go for “US VPN,” if it is something related to UK or NL, you would go for other packages.
NL VPN package is quite popular along with US VPN, because CactusVPN allows torrent downloads over p2p network on NL severs only. If you are looking for a VPN service providers mainly because you want to unblock certain websites, you should go for their SmartDNS service. It unblocks dozens of websites, including popular US and UK based websites – Netflix, Hulu, Spotify etc.
There is a special package which includes US, UK and NL VPN servers + Smart DNS service all packed in one plan. The VPN+Smart DNS services costs $6.99/mo and if you ask me, it is total value for money. I have been using this package since 15 days now.
If you want to browse internet anonymously, but want to unblock websites as well — you don’t have to lookout for two different service providers for VPN and smart DNS service. You can simply opt for their combined package, which is designed for users like us.
Moving forward to the registration of the account, you will be prompted to choose the billing cycle during the registration process. There is 4 billing cycle – Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-Annually and Annually. The company accepts almost all possible digital transaction methods. It is often very difficult for non-US resident to make online transactions outside their country. Fortunately, unlike other VPN companies CactusVPN is partnered with many payment gateways other than paypal and general credit card payments, like —CashU, Alipay, Webmoney, Yandex.Money, Boleto Bancario, and Qiwi. If you live in any country where cashU is available, I’m sure you already know how this works. If not – it’s really simple and you can find out how to use it on their websie.
Here are the lists of payment options available on their website:
Credit Card – All over the world
PayPal – 193 countries and teritories
Alipay – China
Webmoney – Russia
Yandex.Money – Russia
Boleto Bancario – Brazil
Qiwi – Russia, China, Brazil, India, South Africa, Romania, Panama, Peru, Chile, Malaysia, Vietnam, Argentina, Colombia, Serbia, Latvia, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan
cashU – Middle East and North Africa region
After successful payment, they sent several emails, which includes — payment confirmation, welcome email and my account details. There are 2 methods you can use to implement the anonymity on your system — manual implementation, or software based implementation. The account details I received, mentioned the easiest way to access their service, which turned out to be their VPN software.
Downloads:
I found account details in my email, which helped me log into client area. You’ll find details about your subscribed package and license key in your account. The email sent by them has full detailed information about the service and how to use it.
You can download the setup files and android application on their download page.
Using CactusVPN software:
The setup process is anything like installing other software — you just need to agree to the terms, click “next” several times and “Finish” at the end. There nothing you will have to take care of while installing the software. When installation completed, the VPN software will initialize. Click Yes, if prompted for administrator authorization.
You can manage your VPN as well as Smart DNS service through single software, which is very convenient and easy to use. The CactusVPN software is really easy to use and hassle free.
There are two tabs for VPN and Smart DNS, which is used to manage or connect to the service you need to use. If you subscribed for VPN+Smart DNS package, you can use either of the service at a time. The account details are provided in the emails sent by the company, when you first registered on the website. You can also find these details in client area when you sign in to their official website.
Please Note that Login details for client area and VPN service are different. Also, to access Smart DNS service you must have a unique key to login to the client area. You can find all these details in the client area.
VPN Service:
To access VPN service on the CactusVPN software you have to provide username and password. These information can be found on your Client area, as shown in snapshot above. Once logged in, you’ll be greeted by a sleek user interface, which will help you secure your internet connection and flip off intruders and snoopers.
Since, I subscribed for all three servers, I can connect to any one of them. To test our website accessibility, I connected to the US server and tried to access hulu and Netflix. I could easily use these websites, regardless of my geographical location.
Maybe a late launch into the market has helped them understand the issues and pitfalls faced by existing VPN clients while accessing blocked content over the net. This is clearly evident in the way the CactusVPN platform runs and works.
As is the case with other VPN service providers, CactusVPN offers PPTP, SSTP, L2Tp/IPSec and OpenVPN security protocols. No surprises here, but what is outstanding to note is that CactusVPN has gone ahead and implemented a new VPN protocol.
The SoftEther VPN protocol is new in its concept and offers high speed connectivity over extra layers of security. SoftEther VPN protocol is only offered by a handful of VPN providers, and CactusVPN is one among them. Unfortunately, you cannot implement the softEther technology using their official software. If you want to use the latest softEther protocol to secure your network, you have implement it manually. To help you do so, there is a knowledge base that outlines the detailed step-by-step information to implement the protocol on your system.
There are also a handful of settings, which comes really handy while using the software to connect to the VPN servers. You can manage the startup behavior and connection settings on this tab, which governs the behavior of the software under these conditions.
The truly useful feature of the software is the new revolutionary App Killeroption, which is built into the application. You can add the software on this tab, which makes sure that the software included here are terminated when connection to VPN server drops due to some reason. The CactusVPN application will terminate the software included in this list and restart them once reconnected to the server. This is really useful feature for those who take security very seriously.
It is true that it is only a matter of time, when other VPN companies will implement the similar feature to their software as well. But, until then CactusVPN is one of the first company to introduce the App killer to protect you from any possible security exploits.
Speed is another feature that truly works in favor of CactusVPN. Time and again, we have faced streaming issues with various VPN service providers. We couldn’t really complain about the loss of speed, because we understand that speed and bandwidth will be lost while rerouting traffic through different servers located around the world. But CactusVPN has given us what we had always hoped.
Instead of the standard 40-80% customary drop in available ISP speed with other VPN companies, CactusVPN was able to tap into almost 80-90% of the available ISP speed. Even we were surprised to find this was possible. This ensured that all streaming media could be viewed without trouble.
CactusVPN also offer unlimited bandwidth across the board, and there are no bandwidth restrictions. Good speed and unlimited bandwidth mean users with P2P traffic preference will certainly choose CactusVPN over other service providers. This does have its own disadvantages, as the NL server faces a few serious downtime issues, and at peak hours, there are issues of server outages. This trouble is not really that prevalent in the servers from US and UK. Adding a few servers will certainly solve this issue.
SmartDNS:Using smart DNS to unblock websites is a noob friendly process – you just need to provide the unique key you received after subscribing for the service and then you can enable smart DNS service from the sleek interface. There is nothing much here — it is more like a connect and play kind of thing. On settings tab, you can change the website region to be blocked. For instance, if you want to unblock UK websites, you need to select UK from the drop down menu.
Smart DNS is comparatively new technology, which is unused to unblock website by changing the default DNS provided by your ISP, which makes your internet connect appear as the one of those country you are trying to access the website from.
Customer Support:
This is the area I would say is prompt and user friendly. I faced some issues while using their VPN and SmartVPN service. First, I couldn’t Unblock hulu.com using their VPN service, as hulu detected my VPN IP address and blocked the access to the website. It turned out that you can only access hulu and hulu plus on their “Los Angeles” server.
It is not something you should be really worried about. You can access all other websites on any US servers. Hulu.com has been blocking the anonymous IP addresses recently and they implemented the script that detects the VPN tunneling.
Second, I couldn’t get Smart DNS working on my computer. The customer support team asked for the log that you can save within the software they provided and within few minutes they came to the conclusion that my ISP is using transparent DNS, which prevents us to use any other DNS other than default one implemented by the ISP.
On their suggestion I tested the service on different ISP and I could connect to the DNS service without any problem.
During the resolution period, I found the customer support to be prompt and friendly. They always tried to help me as much as possible, which gave you an expression that you mean something to them.
Speed Test:
I tested my internet connection before using the CactusVPN and after connecting to their US, UK and NL servers. The result was really impressive and there were minimal speed drop compared to other VPN services I used. If we had to give some sort of stars or ratings, we would give them 8/10 for fabulous speed. Here are the test results:
1. Before Connecting to CactusVPN service (My normal Speed):
As you know, DigitFreak has been and always will be the supporter of p2p Community. Torrent downloads has been a real concern recently, specially when agencies like NSA and PRISM are tryng to monitor your every move. There is no privacy on the internet anymore. I was little concerned about the copyright issues and how the company will comply with the government, when they ask for their customers details. So I went forward and asked them directly about these points of concern. Here are the reply, that I received from their end:
1. Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you or a 3rd party to match an IP-address and a time stamp to a user of your service? If so, exactly what information do you hold and for how long?
For our VPN and Smart DNS users we keep only connection logs* for 3 days for troubleshooting. But we assure you:
we do not track and do not know about what you’re uploading/downloading while using our services, and there are no logs including this information;
we don’t know or register sites you are visiting;
we do not track which applications you use.
All our customers personal data is totally confidential and is not shared, shown, used or given to any other party under no condition and no exceptions.
* Connection logs is information about your connection time and does not contain anything about what kind of traffic did you do and what did you visit.
2. Under what jurisdictions does your company operate and under what exact circumstances will you share the information you hold with a 3rd party?
Our company is based in Republic of Moldova as it offers pretty good level of Internet security and nice business opportunities. We respond to subpoenas, court orders or legal processes which require us to disclose information. But as we don’t keep the logs there is no much we can disclose.
3. In the event you receive a DMCA takedown notice or European equivalent, how are these handled?
We send them a standard reply that we cannot identify the client who downloaded the torrent as all our clients share the same ip.
4. Do you support p2p protocol transfer? If no, why? If yes, how it can be accessed and what security mechanism you have in place to protect your customers?
We allow torrents downloading only on our NL servers. If you use P2P applications with our service on US or UK servers you will be warned and if you continue to ignore our TOS we reserve the rights to suspend your account without any refund. CactusVPN offers unlimited bandwidth across the board, and there are no bandwidth restrictions. Good speed and unlimited bandwidth mean users with P2P traffic preference will certainly choose CactusVPN over other service providers. we have an app killer which shuts down any software you choose when the VPN connection drops.
5. What steps are taken when a valid court order requires your company to identify an active user of your service?
Never happened something like that before.
6. What is the most secure VPN connection and encryption algorithm you would recommend to your users?
OpenVPN and Softether VPN protocol.
7. You Emphasize on SoftEther protocol. Can you explain how a normal user can be benefited by this protocol and what it really means for end users when security and anonymity is concerned.
At this moment you can set up this protocol just manually. We have tutorials for that. The real advantage of this protocol is that it is not only as safe as open VPN but also very fast and stable.
Verdict:
The simple and robust service provided by them works well on windows and android atmosphere. Both platform has simple user interface and lets you switch between VPN and unprotected connection easily. You can access restricted and geographically blocked internet services within minutes — protecting your online identity.
This is a no-brainer. For under $5 and with an all-inclusive package available, this is certainly something that will get all the anonymous web users excited. It is true that this small fee cannot guarantee your 100% security over the internet, but it is definitely a concrete wall infront of the intruders to break into your house of sensitive information.
It isn’t as if CactusVPN were conservative with their features. There are unique and standard features on offer, and for this price, CactusVPN is a good choice. We can certainly ignore a few shortcomings, and seeing the way CactusVPN are making changes to their services, we expect most of the issues to be sorted out at the earliest.
If you are looking for the anonymous and secure internet access, you should go for it.
When you want to share files with someone else, or a group of people, where do you go? Odds are, you’re surfing torrent search engines. But, did you know that torrent search engines don’t always allow you the greatest selection of files?
Some of them also host illegal content, and do nothing to sweep up the mess. You’re left to fend for yourself as a user – and that can get dangerous. Here’s where private trackers can help.
Why Use A Private Tracker
Companies, like Vuze or uTorrent+, restrict access to content, effectively putting up a “wall” between you and the files being shared. Some companies do this to effectively block or filter illegal content being shared on these networks. Others do it to protect the privacy of users. Sometimes, it’s a little bit of both. With a private tracker, you can also gain access to a larger variety of files, faster download speeds, higher-quality files, and strong communities that support you.
What Does “Private” Mean?
In this case, “private” doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it means. Mostly, “private” means that it’s an exclusive community. There are a lot of benefits, but there are also a lot of rules you must pay attention to. There are also guidelines you must follow or you’ll be kicked out of the community.
A bittorrent tracker is a server that regulated the communication between those downloading and those uploading content. Private bittorrent trackers are selective about who gets to use the site and who doesn’t.
Contrast this to sites to popular torrent search sites, that allow users to use the sites unregulated. When you’re on such a search engine, it’s the wild west. Files are unregulated and it is up to the user to know what kind of files, which may include spyware and malware, they download onto their machine.
With private sites, there are rules regarding the ratio of uploads to downloads. You can’t just download torrents and then delete them. You need to spend some time seeding them too. Some sites will ban you if you have a low ratio, and others will just restrict what you can do on that site.
There are also rules that restrict invites. The users you bring into the community reflect on you. If they harm the community, it can also harm your stance in the community. This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it limits growth of the community. On the other hand, the members that are there are tight-knit.
Finally, there are rules on uploading. If you upload files to the site, they need to be of a certain quality, format, or they must use specific organizational structure. Many torrent search engine sites carry a very disorganized system of files. Private sites, on the other hand, are all about quality and organization.
There may be other rules too, like no illegal content, though these vary from site to site.
The Benefits To You
There are a lot of rules to follow with nearly every private site, but, what do you get out of it? Plenty. There’s usually a fantastic selection of torrents, high-quality files, really fast downloads due to seeding policies and fast internet connections of users, and some increased privacy.
Should You Use A Private Tracker?
Whether you use a private tracker depends on a few things. First, don’t use one because you think it affords you more personal privacy. That might be true in some cases, but it’s only a coincidence. Users on private sites tend to be very serious. Finally, this is a great option if you just want to join a small community and build relationships with other users.
![What are Payment Gateways, and How it works! [For Dummies]](https://digitfreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/z_00001.jpg)
But jst doing tht is not enough. Now the hot I/O are stored, there is the need of an intelligence embedded in the circuitry to read and thus provide the server with required data streams directly from cache without any storage access permissions.
There is no doubt that this deal with help Samsung expand its SSD business since the software mainly addresses to the I/O Bottleneck problems which is a very big problem in virtual server environments. AutoCache very efficiently manages all the cache I/O with minimizing the use of Guest OS resources, which is really good thing in the business. Proximal works with standard flash cards or SSD in the virtual servers such as Microsoft Hyper-v or VMware ESXi.
It even made it clear that they have started the mass production of its 3 dimensional vertical NAND flash memory to be used in the SSDs, which provided much higher storage density (32 vertically stacked cells) almost up to a total of 128 GBs per chip.![HideIPVPN provides free US and UK vpn, but how good are their paid services? [In-depth Review]](https://digitfreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/z_00049.jpg)
If you want to browse internet anonymously, but want to unblock websites as well — you don’t have to lookout for two different service providers for 
Please Note that Login details for client area and VPN service are different. To access VPN/Smart DNS service you must have a unique key to login. You can find these details in the client area.
![Use CactusVPN to surf anonymously and unblock media websites! [In-depth review]](https://digitfreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/cactusvpn.png)
It is true that you cannot figure be 100% sure if they are actually the genuine comments. There is only one way to find out — “Test it yourself!” Don’t worry, I got you covered here. I went straight up and registered to their service for 1 year.
The company accepts almost all possible digital transaction methods. It is often very difficult for non-US resident to make online transactions outside their country. Fortunately, unlike other VPN companies CactusVPN is partnered with many payment gateways other than paypal and general credit card payments, like —CashU, Alipay, Webmoney, Yandex.Money, Boleto Bancario, and Qiwi. If you live in any country where cashU is available, I’m sure you already know how this works. If not – it’s really simple and you can find out how to use it on their websie.
After successful payment, they sent several emails, which includes — payment confirmation, welcome email and my account details. There are 2 methods you can use to implement the anonymity on your system — manual implementation, or software based implementation. The account details I received, mentioned the easiest way to access their service, which turned out to be their VPN software.
I found account details in my email, which helped me log into 
VPN Service:
Maybe a late launch into the market has helped them understand the issues and pitfalls faced by existing VPN clients while accessing blocked content over the net. This is clearly evident in the way the CactusVPN platform runs and works.
There are also a handful of settings, which comes really handy while using the software to connect to the VPN servers. You can manage the startup behavior and connection settings on this tab, which governs the behavior of the software under these conditions.
Using smart DNS to unblock websites is a noob friendly process – you just need to provide the unique key you received after subscribing for the service and then you can enable smart DNS service from the sleek interface. There is nothing much here — it is more like a connect and play kind of thing. On settings tab, you can change the website region to be blocked. For instance, if you want to unblock UK websites, you need to select UK from the drop down menu.
