Public internet access

[pebbles]

Would anyone have any advice please on where the 'safest' places to use internet in the uk are? I'm a bit paranoid about security when using my computer in public, but it's going to be unavoidable for a period of time shortly and wondered if for instance a library would be better than McDo's... or vice versa! Any advice on any security measures I could also take would be appreciated.

 

[KevM]

No specific recommendations for good vs bad providers except I use fon where available; I've got a standalone fon access point which gives me reciprocal access at other fon hotspots (built into all recent BT routers but I use a standalone unit because BT routers have been junk for me). Whatever I connect to whenever I'm away from home and work I always use the VPN from Tunnelbear, my corporate laptop uses a different encrypted VPN. For travel a VPN is essential, it essentially provides an encrypted secure tunnel between you and a trusted server (it also allows you to bypass certain geographic restrictions, but that's another story).

I've used a number of VPNs over the last few years; I like TunnelBear.com and a single account serves my phones, tablets and laptops at a reasonable price, I'm sure others will be along with alternatives.

fon - https://corp.fon.com/en
Tunnelbear - https://www.tunnelbear.com/

 

[pebbles]

Thank you - they both look interesting, though I suspect fon won't be applicable in my situation. Cute bears worth a closer look though, quick look at their site - looks potentially useful for what I'll need but I'd be interested to learn (in simple terms!) how it provides security, and what I'd have to do 'on the ground' so to speak. Techie numpty I'm afraid... don't even know what a VPN is...

 

[KevM]

They give a simple description of Virtual Private Networks on their site - it's what they say, an encrypted virtual network that piggybacks on the internet. I used to knit my own, connecting to a trusted server at home - using TunnelBear or similar is way easier. One thing to be aware of - if you switch country it can trigger security checks with the likes of gmail; it can look suspicious because you can appear to be in 2 countries at once! For this reason it's better to stick to your home country unless you want to appear to be in UK or US for specific reasons, e.g to watch BBC on iPlayer.

https://www.tunnelbear.com/france/


http://help.tunnelbear.com/customer/por ... bear-work-

How does TunnelBear work?
TunnelBear hides your location using a virtual private network, or VPN for short. We’ll try to explain what exactly that is without all the technonerd vocabulary.

When you use the internet, each time you click on a link to open a new page, you send a signal to the website you’re accessing saying something like “hey, show me the page where I can watch that cool new video”. In internet terms, this is called a request.

Each of these requests contains a unique identification number called an “IP address”, which is basically your online mailing address when you’re connected. It’s used to say to the internet “hey, this request came from here, send any pages I request to this address”.

Your address will be unique to the internet connection you’re using so it’s different when you’re at the coffee shop versus at home. However, because this request contains your location, websites are able to find out where you’re located and block you from accessing certain information.


How does it change with TunnelBear?

Once you turn on TunnelBear, you no longer connect directly to the internet. Instead, your connection is diverted through our secured tunnels. You pick which tunnel your connection goes through by selecting a country in the app. By tunneling to these locations, when you request anything from the internet, it will be as if the you’re doing it from the country you selected, instead of your original computer.

Using a VPN to hide your location is a very similar concept to people who rent mailboxes at the post office. TunnelBear allows you to send and receive information from the internet without anyone knowing where you’re located. Just the same as people who rent these mailboxes can send and receive mail without anyone knowing their real home address.

TunnelBear creates a secure, encrypted connection between your computer, tablet or smartphone and a server in the host country you want to connect to. If your communications are intercepted before they reach the TunnelBear servers, they’ll just look like unreadable jargon. To the internet it will look like your signal originated in the host server country.

 

[pebbles]

Thanks Kev for the comprehensive (and comprehensible!) reply. Reading their site further, it certainly seems really clear and I'm 99% certain it'll do exactly what I need - which is provide me with a private and secure means of accessing my normal sites - like online banking, whilst in public places.

It's not so much of a concern whilst at home in France as my connection's not shared with anyone, but I'll be working for a while in the uk, is not economic to install a private line where I'll be so hence the requirement for public connections. I wouldn't see a need for setting/re-setting the country other than as it will be in reality. Unless I'm missing something?!

 

[KevM]

Hi Pebbles,

The main reason for wanting to set an alternate country is to access region specific material, e.g. watching some BBC content while overseas, or wanting to use Twitter or Facebook when in Turkey...

Kev

 

[Stu_2]

Afternoon Kev

Is there much of a noticeable performance drop using TunnelBear?

Cheers
Stu

 

[KevM]

I've not noticed any problems, but I suspect a lot is dependent on the underlying connection. You can try it out for free, I think there's a free monthly allowance of 500MB, which you can extend by making a TunnelBear related tweet (!).

The other suggestion I forgot to mention is to set your network connection to use either OpenDNS or Google public name servers; while this doesn't protect your traffic it can help to prevent being misdirected to some spoof websites.

https://developers.google.com/speed/pub ... docs/using

The Google Public DNS IP addresses (IPv4) are as follows:
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

http://www.opendns.com/ uses
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

You can sign up for an account with OpenDNS, but just setting the name server addresses provides the basic protection against misdirection.

 

[Stu_2]

Nice one. Thanks

 

[pebbles]

Hi Pebbles,

The main reason for wanting to set an alternate country is to access region specific material, e.g. watching some BBC content while overseas, or wanting to use Twitter or Facebook when in Turkey...

Kev

Ah - clever... I see an additional benefit then, even whilst at home. It's mildly annoyed me occasionally that I've not been able to watch something directly from BBC. Thx!