Essential tools for your online start-up business!

Starting your online business can be daunting. For example, which start-up tools  should you use for
your online business? Maybe you’re fresh out of college, or someone who has had enough of working for someone else, or perhaps you’re finding it hard to get work. More and more people are starting their own online business but are unsure which tools are best for start-ups to use.
In this article we take a look at some of the tools for businesses which will help you to organize, secure and manage your business.


Six essential tools for business start-ups
1. Evernote
Evernote is a nifty business tool which can capture everything; from what you’ve written down to what you hear. You can add images, scanned documents and even audio.  Many users refer Evernote as their “external brain” and the great thing about this startup tool is that you can access all this information from anywhere – say goodbye to folders, and binders and the post-it note!
You’re in a meeting, and there’s a bunch of really helpful notes on a whiteboard. Instead of typing the information or writing it down, simply take a picture of the whiteboard with your phone, and Evernote takes care of the rest. You can find anything quickly using Evernote, and it even recognize texts inside your images or files.  Check out their website and their beginner’s guide for more information.

2. Virtual Private Network (VPN) – Hide My Ass! Pro VPN
Whether your online business is new or you’re just looking to start one, you need to be able to keep in touch with your contacts and clients at all times. There will be times that you’ll need to work in a cafe, in a hotel or airport, and you’ll need to use public Wi-Fi – but danger lurks! This is because public hotspots do not give any encryption security. You should seriously think about using a VPN to safeguard your data.

HMA! Pro VPN (yes, it’s a shameless plug), should be an essential part of your online start-up toolkit, especially when using public Wi-Fi.
Just imagine, a thief, attacker or other third party stealing your ideas, your contacts, your banking and other confidential information?. Not a pleasant thought, is it? You take an enormous risk each time you use public Wi-Fi. Secure your personal data with a VPN.

3. Dashlane
How many passwords do you have for all your various accounts; Facebook, Twitter, banking, etc?  Of course, you shouldn’t be using the same password for all your accounts for security reasons, which leaves you racking your brain trying to remember them all. We’ve all been there, typed in what we think is our password, and yep, access denied. You enter it in again, and again, positive that it’s the right one this time, then once you realise you’re beaten, and click the dreaded “Forgot your Password?” button.

Thank the password gods for Dashlane! Dashlane is a fantastic password manager, it’s secure and even provides a “free form filler to automatically login to your accounts” which saves your brain from having to remember all those passwords. Check out their website for further details.

4. Boomerang
Don’t let that important lead end up forgotten at the bottom of your email account!
What Boomerang does is quite simple, but it’s super-duper useful.
It’s Monday morning, and you have 200 emails to plough through and respond to. Replying to some of those emails will likely drop through the net, which could potentially jeopardise the success of your online business.
Boomerang is a free Gmail plugin which works far better than setting a reminder in your calendar, because Boomerang sends you a reminder straight to your inbox.

5. Hootsuite
Many online businesses heavily rely on getting their message and brand across the countless number of social media platforms on the market to expose their business to many people as possible. Hootsuite is a great social media management tool that allows you to manage Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all from one dashboard.
There are a number of cool things you can set up on it, for example, anyone who mentions you in a tweet will show up in your alerts.
There’s also an auto-schedule posts feature which is a very handy tool for businesses to keep in contact with customers around the globe 24/7.

6. Google
We’ve all heard of Gmail, but did you also know that Google has some other great gems in their treasure chest? For example, there is Google Drive – which allows you to write articles, create spreadsheets, and you can also share these documents with your clients. There’s also Google Hangouts for all your video conferencing and messaging needs.

Hopefully you will find some of these tools for businesses useful.

If you already have a start-up, which business tools do you use?

HMA! Pro VPN allows you to surf the net anonymously, bypass government internet blocks, you can access TV shows from any country, and keep safe when using public Wi-Fi hotspots.  For full details visit our website, or you can always drop us an email or contact us via LiveChat – we always love to hear from you!

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Facebook privacy watcher – colour code your posts

For those who use Facebook but find it hard to set their privacy settings, or for those concerned about
over sharing their personal information, help is at hand: Facebook Privacy Watcher! Facebook is well known for continuously updating its privacy policy, which often leaves its 1.44 billion monthly active users completely dumbfounded as to what personal information the world can and cannot see.
It can be difficult to control and manage your privacy settings on Facebook but now, thanks to Facebook Privacy Watcher, you can easily see what you’re sharing and with whom, and reclaim your privacy.


Facebook Privacy Watcher is especially useful for privacy conscious users, those of us who aren’t tech savvy, or for Facebook users who haven’t got time to wade through Facebook’s latest privacy policy changes – which let’s face it – is a drag and not that easy. Plus, Facebook Privacy Watcher is a great tool if you have young children and want to help them stay safe online.

How does Facebook Privacy Watcher work?
Facebook Privacy Watcher is colour coded – which means that you can easily and quickly see what you are sharing and with whom, so there is less chance that you don’t share things you’d rather only your Facebook friends see.
Once you have downloaded Facebook Privacy Watcher it will colour code your entries as follows:

• Green – means your posts, images and videos are public
• Orange – Only friends can see your posts
• Red – Only you can see your posts
• Blue – Custom settings – only visible to certain people

You can disable Facebook Privacy Watcher whenever you want and, if you wish, you can change your current privacy settings by clicking on your post and changing the colour. You can also change the default colours to a preferred colour of your choice.

How to reduce your digital footprint
Each time we jump online we leave behind traces of our online activity, also known as our ‘digital footprint.’ There are a number of ways we can reduce our online presence. For example, you can use a number of browser plugins that actively block third parties from tracking you across the web.
These data-hungry third party companies, like blood-thirsty vampires, crave our metadata as it’s the lifeblood of their industry. As we spend more and more time searching online, making online purchases, and sharing our lives with the outside world on social media, we give these companies more and more information about ourselves, making it a lot easier for marketing companies to turn over more and more profit. We also leave the door wide open to attackers, identity thieves and other malevolent parties.

However, blocking these third parties, or using Incognito Mode / Private Browsing won’t erase all traces of your internet activity because with every website you visit, you leave behind your IP address.

Our fascination and addiction to surfing the net certainly knows no bounds, but how can we limit our exposure on the World Wide Web?

Fortunately there is a tool that you can use to reclaim your privacy and that’s by using Hide My Ass! Pro VPN.  A VPN hides your original IP address and your real location, and passes all the information you send and receive via an encrypted tunnel.


Are you doing all you can to limit your exposure online?

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Hide My Ass! has joined forces with AVG Technologies

I’m happy and excited to announce that Hide My Ass! has joined forces with AVG Technologies.
Our mission at HMA! has always been to be the go-to tool for anyone who wants to surf the web freely, privately, securely and without restrictions. I’m incredibly proud that nearly 10 years later our service has done just that, and has been used by tens of millions of people all over the world.

At the heart of our success is an absolute commitment to delivering the best possible service to our customers. We operate the largest and most diverse VPN network in the world, as well as being the first service to offer feature rich software and apps, thanks to our team who strive to increase the capabilities of our service on a daily basis. As a result, we have been at the forefront of delivering VPN services to customers all over the world since the very formation of this industry.
This ambition is why we are so thrilled to be teaming up with AVG Technologies, the respected online security company with over 200 million active users worldwide.

AVG shares the same values we do: an unrivalled commitment to deliver the best products and service to our customers. Joining AVG Technologies will help us accelerate our ambition to be the biggest and best VPN service in the world. AVG has a phenomenal team and history, and we are delighted to be working with them and look forward to the exciting opportunities that will result from us joining the AVG family.

None of my journey would have been possible without our 100+ strong team, which started out as a global remote workforce, people I had never met – simply nicknames in an IRC channel, who shared the same passion of online privacy, security, and freedom as I did, who later along with others came on-board full time and in person to form our offices in London, Belgrade and Kyiv.
For each person that has spent time working for HMA! over the past 10 years, I am extremely grateful for your hard work and look forward to sharing an exciting next chapter of our success with you.

For you, the customer, nothing will change; you will continue to enjoy the service provided by HMA! and we will continue to operate independently. As part of the AVG family, HMA! will have access to the expertise and resources of a major security company which will allow us to further improve our products.

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How to Unblock Nauru from Facebook stifling freedom of expression

The blocking of Facebook in Nauru came into effect last week in an effort to stamp out criticism of
the country’s government. Blocking Facebook is a favourite move for a number of dictatorial-led governments including North Korea, China and Iran. And now Nauru blocks Facebook – joining the censorship gang!

But is there more to this story than first meets the eye?

Nauru, formally known as Pleasant Island, located 500 kilometers north-northeast of Papua New Guinea and just 26 miles south of the Equator has a population of over 9,000 people, 90% of them Christians.

The blocking of Facebook in Nauru is apparently to protect the country’s “Christian heritage and culture” – nothing whatsoever to do with stifling freedom of expression, or censorship. Well, that’s a relief!

Increasing numbers of Nauruans are sick and tired of Justice Minister David Adeang dictatorial antics, and see the ban on Facebook as a measure to stop them from voicing their frustrations against their government.

Opposition MP Matthew Batsiua told ABC news that “This is all about Adeang and his cronies being worried about the ever increasing number of people who have taken to social media to criticise his dictatorial style. which even the president is either unwilling – or too scared – to rein in.”
Adeang, as have so many before him, is citing the reason for the block on Facebook in Nauru to block pornography, and to protect Nauru’s heritage claiming “many outside of Nauru do not understand Pacific or Nauruan culture.”

Yes, that makes sense. Nauru blocks Facebook to preserve their heritage, faith and values. To think that Facebook has been blocked to stop criticism of the government would be absurd!

However, ABC News in Australia have reported (via an anonymous source) that orders to ban on Facebook in Nauru has come directly from the Australian government to assist its Cambodian resettlement policy.  This, says Pamela Curr from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre speaking to ABC News, is because “The Australian Government is anxious to get a group of people going to Cambodia and they are concerned that the people on Nauru are in touch with advocates in Australia who they believe are talking them out of the Cambodian option.”

Curr firmly believes that the ban on Facebook in Nauru will be lifted as soon as the plane leaves for Cambodia. However, Australian authorities claim that the Facebook block in Nauro has nothing to do with them.

Nauru blocks Facebook – but HMA! Pro VPN can unblock it!
Unfortunately, there seems no end to governmental online censorship, but thankfully Hide My Ass! Pro VPN can help.  Learn how a VPN works and join the millions of other people around the world who use a VPN to bypass government blocks on websites.

We have 848 VPN servers in 182 countries around the world including VPN servers in Kiribati, Vanuatu and we also have a VPN server in Tokelau.


More information on our VPN servers can be found our main website.

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Iran fails to block Justin Bieber off Instagram

Iran’s so-called “smart filtering” system isn’t quite as smart as Iranian officials thought, as images
 belonging to some of the worlds biggest internet stars are flooding Instagram. Yes – now Iranians have the guilty pleasure of being able to drool, or gawk, at shirtless images of Justin Bieber’s ABsolutely fABulous six-pack, and lest we forget the woman who broke the internet, Kim Kardashian displaying her more than generous ASSets. Oh and there are some of Jennifer Lopez too!

Instagram accounts displaying saucy or risqué images were previously blocked in Iran, at least 983 according to a paper presented at a technology conference in Berlin recently. But now Iranians appear to be able to connect to them. This is likely due to Instagram encrypting connections between users’ devices and Instagram’s servers which has made it increasingly difficult for any third party (like Iran’s “smart filtering” system!) to tell which accounts users connect to. Much to the horror of Iranian hardline clerics, I’m sure!

Iran’s “smart filtering”, their pièce de résistance, allows officials to control what Iranians can and cannot access online. For example, they may want to censor certain pages on a website that the Islamic government considers immoral, not the entire site. However, Iran’s “smart filtering” has failed this time to block a number of Instagram accounts.

Iran’s country’s culture minister Ali Jannati admitted Sunday that they can no longer block or filter out immoral content from social media sites, such as Facebook and Instagram due to technical and geographical capabilities. Great news!

Jannati told police commanders that “This government believes we cannot fight this technology en masse. It’s like blocking the entire highway for the violation of a few cars.”
The official number of Instagram users in Iran has not been released, however, Cafe Bazaar (a leading consumer internet company in Iran) says more than 6 million users have download the app – all now enjoying Bieber, Kardashian and Lopez!

Use a VPN to beat online censorship!
According to a study published by the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs, nearly 70% of Iranians, aged between 15 and 29, use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to bypass blocked websites such as Twitter (although President Hassan Rouhani is allowed to use it), YouTube and Facebook.

Planning a trip to Iran?  Or maybe you know someone in Iran who would benefit from using a VPN? Tell them about Hide My Ass! Pro VPN and help them to lift stupid blocks on websites.  Feel free to give them our email address: info@hidemyass.com and one of our support donkeys will be more than happy to help!

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How to stay anonymous online: 5 top tips

Want to know how to stay anonymous online? What are the best ways to stay anonymous online and
how can you keep snooping eyes off your online activities?
The world was abruptly woken to the fact of NSA’s mass surveillance of internet traffic thanks to Edward Snowden, and ever since that revelation more and more people around the world have expressed their concerns, frustrations and anger against this extreme, invasive spying technique.
But what are the best ways to help you stay anonymous online? Fortunately, there are many services and apps that will help you to stay secure online and allow you to surf the internet anonymously – stopping eyes from snooping on your online activities!

When the Snowden documents were released, it was revealed that the NSA had difficulty in cracking a number of services which offer encryption. Amongst these revelations was the NSA term “Level 5 catastrophic” which means that the NSA can’t break the encryption – yet!  his is a combination of CSpace, Tor and ZRTP and a anonymizing piece of technology like a VPN, meaning the NSA has “near-total loss/lack of insight to target communications,” according to Der Spiegel.

How to stay anonymous online – 5 tips to surf anonymously and stay anonymous online

1. Virtual Private Network (VPN)
Use a VPN and you’re in great company with millions of other security-conscious people around the world. When you connect to a VPN server, all of your traffic is encrypted, meaning anyone ‘listening in’ will be unable to decrypt or view data being sent, other than a string of meaningless characters. It’s a great piece of technology which will allow you surf anonymously, and stay anonymous online.

2. Dropbox
Now if Edward Snowden says “get rid of Dropbox” (he called the cloud storage system “hostile to privacy”), then I think that’s a good enough reason not to use it. If you do need to share files, try Spideroak which Snowden recommends.

3. Javascript
JavaScript is widely used across the web as its functionality allows the user to interact with websites in a fairly complex way. Use online banking? Facebook? or Google search? It’s a good bet there’s some Javascript running there somewhere. The problem is not with Javascript itself, but how attackers can hijack vulnerabilities in the browser and get Javascript code to do things it’s not meant to, like send you off to a malicious website and install malware and keyloggers. While disabling Javascript completely could be argued as the best option for the security-conscious, it does reduce the level of internet functionally available to the user.  A compromise would be to install NoScript which allows you to disable any running scripts (Java, Flash, etc.) on websites you don’t trust, and whitelist the ones you do. While this won’t encrypt your data, it will potentially stop any harmful code running on your computer.

4. Incognito mode
We recently explained how to use incognito mode on Safari, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. Using incognito mode and clearing cached browsing data stops websites from being able to track you, to an extent. When you use incognito mode your browser, for example Safari, will not store cookies or temporary internet files, and so while this feature will not make you anonymous or encrypt your data, it will help to stop a casual observer from finding out what you’ve been up to online.

5. CSpace
While most people may use Facebook chat or Skype to communicate with friends, it’s long been known that these services can be, and are, intercepted on a regular basis. A more secure service is CSpace, which is an open-source encrypted chat service which allows people to communicate safely and securely, as well as transfer files.
Staying anonymous online isn’t hard to achieve – look out for our next 5 tips on how to stay anonymous online!

More information about HMA! Pro VPN can be found on our website.

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