New VPN provider: IVACY

[Sheldon7]

Hi all,

In my research on VPN providers, I've come across a new one that I havn't seen mentioned on wilders before: http://ivacy.com

Does anyone have feedback, thoughts, comments or suggestions about this group?

Thank you very much in advance for any helpful responses.

[fuzzylogic]

Its certainly more than a standard VPN provider. It offers its own internal sites only accessed through the vpn, such as email and various sites for filesharing (a few commerical ones you have to pay for and then some seedbox type sites for bit torrent and rapid share). It certainly has bang for buck for sure, it offers servers in UK/USA/RU. It also has several different ways to connect, from a simple firefox entension, to a portable http tunnel, to a proper VPN from PTTP, to OPENVPN.

[Sheldon7]

They seem to offer a variety of services, in addition to the VPN.. Could they be a honeypot?.. The prices make them seem too good to be true.

Trying to figure out if there's a catch here.

[jonw]

Well they could be a honeypot but most of the time they setup public proxies for that, but hmm that would be something to look into.

[LockBox]

Honeypot? That's probably going a bit overboard. There's no reason in the world to think that. No more so than any other VPN. A honeypot is more likely to be setup using free proxy sites. So even the suggestion of that is probably unfair in this case.

As much as I like Xerobank, I'm impressed with their presentation. The price seems low, but in fine print you notice you have to buy to what amounts to 12 or 32 US dollars at a time. I took it for a test drive and found it to be much slower than Xerobank using the Russian servers, but it performed pretty well with US/UK servers. The 100MB test drive, which is actually quite a bit of testing, is very nice and can be done with no credit card. You simply download OpenVPN, assign yourself a username and password from the site, email is even optional, and away you go. The internal "intranet" like site is an interesting concept for services such as this. (Which reminds me, I read somewhere where someone was arguing AOL was ahead of its time back in the day with its proprietary site and content. With security concerns, a case could be made.)

As for Ivacy, I'll be interested to hear what Steve has to say as far as the security of the software and those kinds of things. He and Kyle know all that extremely well.

[SteveTX]

Gerard, I haven't looked at ivacy, but when it came out it struck me as low security since they allow bad connection methods. When we get around to it we will test out their network. If someone wants to loan us an ivacy account in a little while, we can try it out and see how they do. I would be interested to find out if it is more than a 1-hop service, and where it is based from.

[Sheldon7]

{QUOTE-> Gerard, I haven't looked at ivacy, but when it came out it struck me as low security since they allow bad connection methods. When we get around to it we will test out their network. If someone wants to loan us an ivacy account in a little while, we can try it out and see how they do. I would be interested to find out if it is more than a 1-hop service, and where it is based from. <-QUOTE}

Hi Steve, interested to hear your take on IVACY as well.:)

It appears they have a free trial - as Gerard noted above.
This is from their website:{QUOTE-> 100Mb of VPN traffic with every new account. No credit card required, signup takes a couple of seconds, and you may start using Ivacy right away! <-QUOTE}

The IVACY signup form is here https://pr.ivacy.com/en/auth/signup

[Z32]

Just checked out their website... looks like a pretty interesting service. They definitely ticked the 'product differentiation' box of their marketing checklist.

Has anyone had a chance to conduct further investigation of ivacy? i.e. speed, number of hops and so on.

Would like to see some reviews, particularly from an expert like Steve if he gets time to do the free trial mentioned in the post above.

[hcl238]

I just started using them.

You can enter from a US, UK, or Russian IP address. You can also configure an end point from any of those. So I connect to a UK IP and exit via the Russian IP.

Here is my typical internet speeds as measured by speedtest.net: 5133/496, 16ms ping and when connecting from UK to Russian IP my speeds are: 1502/116 286ms ping which is pretty typical.

I believe the connection to them is only 128bit encryption.

I was also concerned about traffic leaking outside of the VPN, so I followed this advice here (http://forums.ivacy.com/index.php?topic=77.msg359#msg359) in their forum to block that.

Since this is an unlimited service and they seem to have their own internal http based file sharing site, I cannot imagine this service lasting for too long. They'll either get taken down for copyright violation or just taken down by bandwidth hogs.

I sometimes feel creeped out connected to them (probably with any such service) as they can listen into everything that isn't encrypted, and I'm careful not to use it for sensitive personal websites. Also, I made sure I added a rule to dissallow all incoming traffic from within their private network as you never know what they or your neighbors are doing.

I plan on just moving on when/if they get shut down. In the meantime, an anonymous connection the speed of old skool dsl through two points: it's a good deal.

[havregryn]

I'm also a bit excited, and I worry about DNS-leaks. Their VPN (PPTP) is not so safe I guess, but how about that firefox plugin? If that is DNS safe I would be impressed cos I mostly worry about my DNS when I browse.

Actually I wish I knew how to test DNS leaks myself. Is it hard? Software tips?

Anyway Steve, go go go! test test test!

[SteveTX]

Awww. Don't worry. Our deanonymizer test will shred through ivacy. :)

[Sheldon7]

{QUOTE-> Awww. Don't worry. Our deanonymizer test will shred through ivacy. :) <-QUOTE}

Love your work Steve. Thanks for putting them to the test; really interested to seeing the results and the obvious XB benchmark comparo.

[hcl238]

I too would like to see this service tested. I'm looking forward to the results.

[markoman]

{QUOTE-> Awww. Don't worry. Our deanonymizer test will shred through ivacy. :) <-QUOTE}

I have been listening about this deanonymizer for months now, but I haven't seen anything like that. Does this thing really exists or is it only some kind of "marketing"?

[hcl238]

From the wait, I'm guessing that this test is only rhetorical and not actual.

[SteveTX]

It isn't ready for public consumption, that's why you haven't seen it. However there are some http test pages for parts of it. When it goes public, it will also be released as wordpress plugins as well, so 1) users can test their privacy 2) blog authors can prevent proxy users from commenting or content theives from visiting.

[Nebulus]

{QUOTE-> blog authors can prevent proxy users from commenting <-QUOTE}
This comes from someone advertising a service used to HIDE your identity on the internet? LOL

[SteveTX]

Not really. It's about information control.

1. Being anonymous does not necessarily involve preventing someone from knowing you're anonymous. That usually goes on into OSINT.

2. It is trivial to discover proxies via exit node IP sets, which are available publicly. Many such examples exist such as the tor network directory lists, and those maintained by private corps such as maxmind.

I think the Tor project probably addressed this adequately, if i could find the faq. The bottom line was that you have the right to get open information from those who want to serve you (anti-censorship). That does not include the right to spam (blocking comments), or force anyone to serve you (blocking proxies).

[fuzzylogic]

your probably referring to the EFF guide to anonymous blogging.

[Mover]

{QUOTE-> Awww. Don't worry. Our deanonymizer test will shred through ivacy. :) <-QUOTE}

Have you shredded through it yet ?

[Leonid]

I always see this kind of posts from SteveTX. I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed it. He always claims, this or that is not safe. He will test it and confirm, publish the results. This or that is malware. I'll publish this tool to prove my claims. He said it about Tor too. That he will prove how Tor is weak in early '09. It never happened. ::)

If you're only trying to promote your company, you're doing it in a very bad way. You should read Justin Troutman's posts and see how he promotes PGP. In a very intelligent and clever ways. Well, I might be wrong. Maybe he's not working for PGP. Whatever, his posts are worth to read. People can learn something from his posts. Your posts are just pure claims. When I read you I don't have a feeling that you know what you are talking about. On the contrary. I see you as 1 big spam engine. You probably have a few dozens of accounts in here. Asking and answering about Xerobank.

[hcl238]

I was really hoping for a comprehensive dissection of Ivacy. I guess that's not going to happen.

It's still hands down the best deal out there for the feature set. I was looking for a reason to not use them. They are amazingly cheap compared to all the other VPN offerings out there ($22 a month cheaper than Xerobank!).

My only reservation at this point is that since they are so cheap, their speeds might become unusable.

But for now I will pocket the cash I'll save.

And if you ever do follow through on this Steve, please let us know.

[SteveTX]

They don't have multiplexing, crowding optimization, or jursidictionally aware routing, or a strong corporate structure. You might as well just use a single-hop USA VPN and save even more money :D

When we release deanonymizer on Aug 1, you'll get your dissection of ivacy.

[hcl238]

I'll be waiting....

BTW, which USA VPN service costs less than $13 per month?

[SteveTX]

our new VPN Browser we are going to release costs only $30... per YEAR. Don't tell anyone, nobody else will be able to compete with that. ;D

[box750]

{QUOTE-> I'll be waiting....

BTW, which USA VPN service costs less than $13 per month? <-QUOTE}

VforVPN has as singe hop USA VPN and it costs $5/month. Regarding Ivacy, I was just looking at their terms and conditions and they are subject to UK law, this makes me think that is where Ivacy is based, maybe not the servers but probably their HQ.

The United Kingdom is one of the less privacy friendly countries in the Western World. I would not use a company whose headquarters are located in the UK, I think it is a risk as they are subjected to those antiprivacy laws.