Updates:Free Fast VPN proxies 2
Can it be true? OMG it is for now. Not only that, I can make up a chain as secure as JonDo and even more secure and a lot faster. I think this is because a lot of networks are blocking Social Networks and Youtube etc. Entrepreneurs raise to the occasion. I didn't know why I missed these last time I looked. I did find and tried a few that was bad.
The best seems to be Ultrasurf. I think it's designed for internet cafe in China. You plug in the USB drive, run ultrasurf, which will fire up Internet Explorer. When you quit IE, no trace will be left, it claims. You can use any browser and ultrasurf is just a proxy client. I used it a while back and it was perfect, but not as fast as now. Bandwidth is perhaps cheaper now, and now China is unblocking many sites, lightening the workload of this bypass servers. However, it has ties to Fulon Gong, and perhaps funded by it.
At the time I was using it, I felt the tiny program is untrustworthy, but not in a technical way. The home page is Chinese for example. I thought it could come and go as other tiny proxy servers, and that like many proxy servers, the aim may be just to collect data for sale. Now it seems to direct url's that don't seem safe, and cause conflict, such as utilities that flag ultrasurf as virus.
You can call it a VPN as it's an encrypted proxy. However, it just divert browser traffic. The encryption is claimed to be better than the industry, that is, better than the browser uses. So nobody can ear drop on your traffic, nobody knows what you surf, and the target sites don't know your identity. However, ultrasurf have everything in their server log. You don't know if there's any security risks because it's not open source. The performance is best and passed the hulu.com test. You can watch a movie with encryption!
BTW I tried the gladder, a later software to bypass the Chinese Great Wall. But to my surprise, it's a transparent proxy, even though the traffic is encrypted. The only reason for that is to avoid spammers flooding to the server. But it's too risky to review your ID to the target sites.
The next best is Hotspot Shield. It calls itself a VPN, quite rightly so because it's not a proxy client like others at the application level. You don't even need to set your browser. The traffic in your network is diverted to the proxy server. You can make sure all other users in your home PC are proxified without doing anything themselves. When you launch Hotspot Shield, it forces to launch a browser, but once after that, you can close and fire other browsers at will.
Hotspot Shield is similar to Ultrasurf, passed the Hulu test, quite reliable so far. Again it's not open source. It's ad supported, but the top banner don't appear all the time. For example, you can watch Hulu move full screen. It's a little slower than ultrasurf at times, but still much faster than JonDo and TOR.
It's a true VPN because when you open a command prompt and run ipconfig, the external IP address is changed to a private one. I ran bittorent on it and works without modifying any setting! Another proof is that the download rate is slower by several times. It wouldn't matter when you are in no rush, an hour of download time and several hours don't matter that much. But the problem is that free VPN can't be reliable. When the server is busy, you are thrown out of the private network. So the download went much faster in the middle. You have to manually reconnect to the network.
So Hotspot VPN is only suitable for browsing. When the VPN is down there is no warning other than that the icon turn red - you are suddenly using your own IP without other warning. You have to reconnect again manually.
Another surprise is that I found lots of fast SSL CGI Proxy at FreeProxies. Many are SSL proxies. For the bad, they are the usual trouble makers, pop-ups, top banner ad that distracts, strip a lot of things and can't support a lot of things. It didn't pass the Hulu test but you can surf most other sites. And blockers can deal with the rest, only sacrificing some real estate at top of browser.
The good thing about CGI proxy is that you can chain it with the VPN proxies above, and even add it to JonDo and TOR. You can have one tab that is proxified and the other not. When the banner is at top, you know it's working. When you see the address starts with https, you know SSL is in effect.
Can it be true? OMG it is for now. Not only that, I can make up a chain as secure as JonDo and even more secure and a lot faster. I think this is because a lot of networks are blocking Social Networks and Youtube etc. Entrepreneurs raise to the occasion. I didn't know why I missed these last time I looked. I did find and tried a few that was bad.
The best seems to be Ultrasurf. I think it's designed for internet cafe in China. You plug in the USB drive, run ultrasurf, which will fire up Internet Explorer. When you quit IE, no trace will be left, it claims. You can use any browser and ultrasurf is just a proxy client. I used it a while back and it was perfect, but not as fast as now. Bandwidth is perhaps cheaper now, and now China is unblocking many sites, lightening the workload of this bypass servers. However, it has ties to Fulon Gong, and perhaps funded by it.
At the time I was using it, I felt the tiny program is untrustworthy, but not in a technical way. The home page is Chinese for example. I thought it could come and go as other tiny proxy servers, and that like many proxy servers, the aim may be just to collect data for sale. Now it seems to direct url's that don't seem safe, and cause conflict, such as utilities that flag ultrasurf as virus.
You can call it a VPN as it's an encrypted proxy. However, it just divert browser traffic. The encryption is claimed to be better than the industry, that is, better than the browser uses. So nobody can ear drop on your traffic, nobody knows what you surf, and the target sites don't know your identity. However, ultrasurf have everything in their server log. You don't know if there's any security risks because it's not open source. The performance is best and passed the hulu.com test. You can watch a movie with encryption!
BTW I tried the gladder, a later software to bypass the Chinese Great Wall. But to my surprise, it's a transparent proxy, even though the traffic is encrypted. The only reason for that is to avoid spammers flooding to the server. But it's too risky to review your ID to the target sites.
The next best is Hotspot Shield. It calls itself a VPN, quite rightly so because it's not a proxy client like others at the application level. You don't even need to set your browser. The traffic in your network is diverted to the proxy server. You can make sure all other users in your home PC are proxified without doing anything themselves. When you launch Hotspot Shield, it forces to launch a browser, but once after that, you can close and fire other browsers at will.
Hotspot Shield is similar to Ultrasurf, passed the Hulu test, quite reliable so far. Again it's not open source. It's ad supported, but the top banner don't appear all the time. For example, you can watch Hulu move full screen. It's a little slower than ultrasurf at times, but still much faster than JonDo and TOR.
It's a true VPN because when you open a command prompt and run ipconfig, the external IP address is changed to a private one. I ran bittorent on it and works without modifying any setting! Another proof is that the download rate is slower by several times. It wouldn't matter when you are in no rush, an hour of download time and several hours don't matter that much. But the problem is that free VPN can't be reliable. When the server is busy, you are thrown out of the private network. So the download went much faster in the middle. You have to manually reconnect to the network.
So Hotspot VPN is only suitable for browsing. When the VPN is down there is no warning other than that the icon turn red - you are suddenly using your own IP without other warning. You have to reconnect again manually.
Another surprise is that I found lots of fast SSL CGI Proxy at FreeProxies. Many are SSL proxies. For the bad, they are the usual trouble makers, pop-ups, top banner ad that distracts, strip a lot of things and can't support a lot of things. It didn't pass the Hulu test but you can surf most other sites. And blockers can deal with the rest, only sacrificing some real estate at top of browser.
The good thing about CGI proxy is that you can chain it with the VPN proxies above, and even add it to JonDo and TOR. You can have one tab that is proxified and the other not. When the banner is at top, you know it's working. When you see the address starts with https, you know SSL is in effect.
2 comments:
Thanks for a great review! I have tried some of the service you mentioned. BTW, what is Jondu, do you have a link?
Whether you use Windows, a Mac, or Linux, vpn is probably your simplest, most robust way–among the free products–to secure your Wi-Fi sessions. The download takes seconds, and OpenVPN works with Windows Vista. OpenVPN is a long-standing open-source project, so while you won’t get the support you receive if you pay for a VPN, it is a very solid product that shouldn’t provide any compatibility problems.
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