It’s a terrifying experience to think your MacBook could be infected with a virus. While Macs are traditionally more secure than Windows PCs, this does not mean they are invincible.
If you are concerned about malware and viruses compromising the security of your device, you aren’t alone.
1 – OS Updates
First, keep your operating system updated by enabling automatic software updates in the System Preferences menu.
The latest version of macOS is designed with recent security features that can help protect against potential threats.
Additionally, ensure that all your apps are also up-to-date, as outdated versions may contain vulnerabilities that malicious actors could exploit.
2 – Passwords
Second, use strong passwords for all your accounts and change them regularly to reduce the risk of being hacked or having personal data breached.
If a hacker gains access to one account using an easily guessed password, they may be able to use other profiles too – so it pays to take extra steps when it comes to keeping online credentials secure.
3 – Antivirus Software
Third, install reliable antivirus software and configure it correctly so that it scans regularly for any malicious activity on your machine.
This should include real-time scanning for incoming files or emails as well as scheduled scans at regular intervals for ongoing protection against new threats.
4 – 2FA
Fourth, consider using two-factor authentication whenever possible, as this offers an extra layer of defense when logging into accounts or services online.
This involves entering both a username/password combo and another form of verification (such as a code generated by an authenticator app).
It adds an additional hurdle that hackers must overcome before being able to gain access to sensitive data or accounts protected by two-factor authentication protocols.
5 – Awareness
Fifth, always be aware of phishing attempts used in order to trick users into providing their login details or infecting their computers with malware disguised as legitimate programs.
Do not click on links contained within messages unless you are confident they are from trusted sources, and remember that even if the conversation appears to have been sent from someone you know (e.g., a family member or friend), there is no guarantee that it is genuine – so exercise caution when opening URLs, especially if they look suspicious.
6 – App Downloads
Sixth, try not to download applications from unknown developers who do not provide support for their products – make sure the app comes from a reputable source before downloading it onto your computer.
Additionally, avoid visiting sites that might contain malicious content, such as those related to illegal activities like piracy and gambling websites, which often have hidden malware within their advertisements or embedded videos/games, and so on.
7 – Email Attachments
Seventh, be wary of email attachments containing files with executable file extensions such as .exe; these may include viruses even if they appear harmless at first glance (so ensure you scan them before opening them).
Similarly, avoid opening attachments received via text message too.
8 – Connected Peripherals
Eighthly, don’t forget about other devices connected to your network, such as smartphones and tablets – confirm that these devices have good antivirus protection installed on them too.
In cases like when you enable the target disk mode Mac offers, your caution levels do not need to be that high, but it is still a good piece of advice to be mindful.
9 – Encryption
Ninth, consider using encryption tools like PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), which can help protect data from prying eyes.
However, be aware that some countries have laws regarding its usage, so check local regulations first.
10 – Java on Browser
Tenth, disable Java on your browser if you don’t need it since many attackers use Java vulnerabilities in order to infect machines with malware; only enable it if absolutely necessary.
11 – Data Backups
Eleventh, back up all important files regularly just in case something goes wrong; this will ensure you can recover any lost data quickly without having to worry too much about starting again from scratch.
12 – Information Tracking
Twelfth, stay informed about emerging threats via news outlets or blogs dedicated specifically to cybersecurity issues.
This way, if something new pops up in terms of malicious activity, then at least you will already know what precautions need to be taken to remain ahead of the curve.
Closing Thoughts
In summary: following these 12 tips will help you avoid advanced viruses on your MacBook and ensure its security remains intact over time.
Keep yourself informed regarding new threats for the best defense against any malicious attacks targeting Apple devices running macOS!
I have reviewed many VPN and web proxy services in the past, but you’d find a very few of them offering a free service that can be used conventionally anywhere, on demand. Recently, while I was in Jaipur, India, I encountered an internet service provider which was very restrictive about the websites I visit using their connection; blocking many P2P and media streaming websites. Typically, I would use one of the many VPN services that I am subscribed to, but unfortunately, I didn’t have access to my computer, which means none of the VPN credentials were available at my disposal. I tried using some web proxy services such as Kproxy, Hidemyass and proxy site among many others but sadly, none of them could properly render all the website I visited. Most of the web proxy servers do no process the complex queries required for some section of websites to work in a manner that it would have with our regular internet connection.
This is where I felt the need to use public/premium Proxy IP addresses, which once was my favourite anonymity tool to hide personal data while accessing some websites back in high school. Public/premium Proxy IPs works very differently than VPNs as it is limited to your web browser, while traditional VPNs encrypt all your incoming/outgoing traffic to or from your computer.
What happens when you visit a website without Proxy or VPN services:
In order to access the website, you are connecting directly to the server where the resources of the website are stored. The website and your ISP can log following information that can be used to uniquely identify every user who uses these resources.
It knows your external IP – that’s a piece of information about you, probably not enough to identify you with certainty, but enough to find out your approximate geographical location.
It knows the cookies you have on your computer – you may delete them later, but you definitely don’t delete them each time you load a website.
It knows what browser you’re using and what plugins you have installed. Every time you visit a website, your browser sends the User-Agent string which can be used to identify a browser, its version, OS version, and sometimes installed browser extensions.
It knows where you’re coming from. An HTTP referrer (sic!) is sent each time you click a link. Basically, when you navigate from one site to another, the target site will know the URL or previous site.
Additionally, there are more advanced tracking algorithms that just won’t be easy to shrug off when you require a total anonymity or bypass your ISPs restrictions. Yes, there are tools that can help you block cookies, UAs, and referrers in your browser, but there are more programs that use HTTP. Most of these programs won’t let you hamper the inbuilt settings and mechanism of their service protocol.
Using VPN and Web Proxy services to lift ISP restrictions and hide personal identity
Online VPN services, VPN providers, Web proxy, Socks Proxy and Proxy sites are some of the most effective tools that can help you get rid of the restrictions imposed by your ISP and help keep your identity safe on the internet.
We have reviewed plenty of VPN services on our website, which can be trusted to handle our precious personal details. At the end, we really have to be careful that the company we choose must be capable of handling the individual information anonymously without any data leak.
If anonymity is not your concern then you can use some of the best free Online VPN extensions for available for your browser, which is ranked according to their reputation and efficiency on digitfreak. These browser extensions work very similarly to the proxy IPs that we are going to use, as they only encrypt the traffic of your browser it is installed on.
How proxy IP helps hide your true identity?
A proxy (technically an open proxy) server is a computer that acts as an intermediary between your computer and the internet. Any traffic routed through a proxy server will appear to come from its IP address, not your computer’s.
Unlike VPN, proxy servers don’t usually encrypt your internet traffic which allows them to handle large user pool with insignificant resource requirements.
If you use Proxy server on your browser, it can alter your internet connection to hide your true identity or remove any ban imposed by the ISP:
It can replace the User-Agent string with some meaningless string or strip out the referrers.
It can accept all cookies, but not pass them to you, or it can block them altogether.
It’s the proxy that’s connecting to the server, not you, so your IP isn’t disclosed.
A proxy can be set up to work system-wide, so programs won’t be able to bypass it.
There are also some extra features that a proxy can provide:
It can compress your traffic to save some bandwidth.
It can cache files to give a little boost to page load times.
It can strip ads from websites before they reach your computer.
It can block malicious websites.
And finally, it can be used not only against filters but also as a filter!
HTTP and SOCKS proxy
Web Proxy services utilise one of the two different protocols to connect with the internet. The HTTP and SOCKS work very differently as they are capable of handling a different level of internet protocols.
The HTTP protocol is designed to interpret traffic at the HTTP level, which means that it can only handle traffic that starts with http:// or https://, i.e. web pages*. Whereas the SOCKS servers do not interpret network traffic at all, which makes them much more flexible, but because they are usually handling more traffic, usually slower. The big advantage of the SOCKS protocol is that it supports any kind of internet traffic, such as POP3 and SMTP for emails, IRC chat, FTP for uploading files to websites, and torrent files.
Best Free & Premium Proxy IP list
On my quest to find the best free proxy IP list, I stumbled upon the website called Hidester – “Free Public Premium Proxy List (https SSL, socks 4/5)” among many others which offer useful free tools. Hidester has a section on their website that lists all the active proxy IPs documented according to various categories and efficiency.
The powerful search option and elegant website design make it easier to find the suitable IP address according to our preference. It feels much better and refreshing when compared to other popular proxy lists available on the internet. However, I don’t want you to get confused or mislead by the fact that this website has a fluid user interface and likeable interactive environment with the ability to choose any IP from the list blindly and think that it will work. It is true that Hidester does check all the IP addresses for their availability and performance (especially the premium ones), but not all of them will work. In my test, I had to test out few of them before I found the working Proxy IP that was in the list of filtered IPs matching my search criteria.
One you find that perfect public IP address, you’re good to go. After that, you basically have to put it in your browser and forget about it. Unless you want to browse the internet with your real IP address for some reason.
Surprisingly, I didn’t notice any significant drop in my speed. Maybe, I was lucky to pick the Public Proxy IP that had perfect infrastructure to back it up, or the Hidester does actually make a list that includes only fast Proxy Servers.
You can test it out and let us know in comments whether you had a similar experience. I would love to hear if others get as lucky as I was; If you do, I would love to recommend it on a larger scale and approach them for partnership.
VPN (Virtual Private Network) is one of the most popular security measure practised by netizens to secure their online identity and privacy. VPNs are great for security, but one of the big reasons many people use one is to mask or change their IP address. It is also a great service to access the geo-blocked contents, and check whether your ISP is throttling your connection. What most of the VPN service providers doesn’t reveal when you subscribe to their services is that you’re not protected from “webRTC IP leak,” unless you manually take actions against it.
A very concerning security flaw revealed earlier this year that it’s easy to see the real IP-addresses of many VPN users through a WebRTC feature. With a few lines of code, websites can make requests to STUN servers and log users’ VPN IP-address and the “hidden” home IP-address, as well as local network addresses. Advertisers, data brokers, and governments can use it to peek through your VPN to find out where your connection is really coming from.
What is this? Is my privacy at risk?
If you’re using Mozilla Firefox version 22+, Google Chrome version 23+ or any other web browser which are based on these are vulnerable to WebRTC by default. And No, your VPN service providers cannot do anything to fix it.
Actually, WebRTC is an API definition draughted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that supports browser-to-browser applications for voice calling, video chat, and P2P file sharing without the need for either internal or external plugins. It is enabled on all modern web browsers by default, although it is a really useful piece of programme which enables you to utilise video calling and multimedia transmission right through your browser but due to the nature of this extension, your real IP address and privacy is in danger.
If you’re a VPN user and you didn’t block webRTC on your web browser manually, you’re at great risk. Unfortunately, Most of the VPN providers doesn’t warn you about this vulnerability that poses a higher risk to your privacy.
As far as we know, sites aren’t taking advantage of the flaw yet, but considering services like Hulu, Spotify, Netflix, and others are taking steps to identify and lock out VPN users, it’s not a stretch to assume they’ll start. If you use services like BitTorrent, have a set-top box like a Roku, or just stream music or movies on your computer through a site that’s not available in your country (or you’re an expat and live abroad), the apps and services you use could suddenly stop working.
How to check if your VPN is affected?
If you’re not using any privacy tools, then this vulnerability won’t affect you. However, if you’re using a VPN service or similar tools to hide your identity than make sure your tool doesn’t leak IP address.
Now, login to VPN and go to this page – IpLeak test by Hidester, and check if it reveals your real IP address you got from the previous step. You should look at “Your IP address – WebRTC detection.“
Currently, I am personally using VyprVPN for my next article, reviewing the service they provide. I am glad they warned the users about this security flaw right after it was first reported. The fix is much easier to implement on Firefox because you can disable it without using any third party extension while Chrome users require instaling an extension to disable webRTC in their browser.
Instructions:
Mozilla Firefox:
WebRTC in Mozilla Firefox is partially supported by Firefox 22, and it’s enabled by default. To disable WebRTC in Firefox, go to about:config and toggle media.peerconnection.enabled to false.
Google Chrome:
WebRTC in Google Chrome is supported and enabled by default since Chrome version 23 (and based on it, ex. Opera, Vivaldi). You cannot disable the webRTC on Google Chrome browsers by default and it can only be achieved using a third party Official Google extension.
This vulnerability is serious, but on the bright side, it’s easily mitigated. If anything, it’s a reminder to never take your privacy for granted, even if you use all the right tools to protect it.
A new security bug targeted to Android devices allows anyone to spy on anyone with single MMS (video message). What makes it even scary is that the attacker don’t even require your interaction with the message sent to your device. You just have to look at the notification or unlock your device when such message arrives on your phone. Isn’t it scary?!
What is it?
It is theoretically a security bug in Android system that penetrates almost all smartphones powered by Android ecosystem. Devices that run Android OS older than Jelly Bean 4.1 are at high risk because they lack the application sandbox design to protect user data and other applications on the device.
The security of Android users is extremely important to us and so we responded quickly and patches have already been provided to partners that can be applied to any device.
Most Android devices, including all newer devices, have multiple technologies that are designed to make exploitation more difficult. Android devices also include an application sandbox designed to protect user data and other applications on the device. — said Google
The detailed information has not been made public yet, which is highly likely to be revealed during the upcoming Black Hat conference next week in Las Vegas. All we know right now that your Android phone can be tracked, monitored or exploited for some serious cyber crime if you do not take precautions or keep your device updated.
The exploit comes into play with Google’s “stagefright” media playback engine, which was introduced in Android 2.2 and prevailed ever since. It was only recently exploited when Google hangout and other 3rd party SMS apps introduced the feature to autoplay MMS (text message) on the phone once the user opens the message or notification.
The security hole affects almost all versions of Android, from version 2.2 right up to 5.1, the latest version. An Android user simply needs to receive a text message (MMS) from the attacker, which automatically trigger the malicious code hidden in that video message (thanks to the stagefright). This code can then be triggered when you see the notification, unlock screen to see the message, and finally when you watch the MMS message, touch the video or rotate the screen.
The good news is that Google has already developed a patch for this vulnerability and it is ready to be deployed through OTA — but, only if you have Google Nexus devices. For everyone else, you will have to rely on your manufacturer or service provider to roll out the security patch that would eventually fix this bug.
If you use Google hangout to manage text messages on your device, the fix is really easy.
Open Google Hangout App > Go to “Settings”
Go to “SMS” option.
Scroll down, and un-check “Auto retrieve MMS”
That’s it! it will protect you from the automatic execution of malicious code on your device when you receive an MMS message from your attacker. However, you can still get infected if you open the video or play it on your device. There’s nothing much you can do except taking precautions and be careful when you receive the MMS (Who uses it today?) from an unknown number.
All other third party SMS apps may or may not have the option to turn off auto retrieve function of MMS, if that is the case we suggest you use any other SMS managing app from play store that allows you to turn off MMS feature completely. If you’re a root user simply remove the third party apk files from your phone and keep your device up to date.
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!
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.
If you’re not using any privacy tools, then this vulnerability won’t affect you. However, if you’re using a VPN service or similar tools to hide your identity than make sure your tool doesn’t leak IP address.
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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.
