Hide My Ass! offers free VPN services to help Turkish citizens beat censorship

Here at Hide My Ass! we were appalled to hear about the latest news from Turkey and the ban on Twitter.  We’re taking drastic steps to support HMA! users in Turkey at this time – by offering free VPN during this ban – read on for details.

On Thursday night Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan banned Twitter, one of the most popular sources of online news and communication. After recently labeling social networks as “the worst menace to society”, he fulfilled his intention to close down Twitter.

To justify this action Erdogan’s office said that Twitter did not obey a Turkish court order to remove certain links on their web site.  “If Twitter officials insist on not implementing court orders and rules of law … there will be no other option but to prevent access to Twitter to help satisfy our citizens’ grievances,” the statement said.  Earlier in February he accused a so called “robot lobby” of targeting the government through Twitter messages. This came after recordings of Erdogan telling his son to dispose of large sums of money leaked into the public. Although the authenticity of the audio recordings was not verified, the incident prompted many Turkish citizens to discuss matter of corruption in his government. The proximity of the incident, occurring just before elections on March 30 has irritated Erdogan enough to shut down Twitter, as well as threaten similar actions against Facebook and Youtube.

We are proud of the role we played in the Arab Spring of 2011, when we had record traffic from Egypt.  More recently, we have been supporting the #KholoBC campaign against the censorship of Youtube in Pakistan. Free speech and communication are fundamental human rights and to show our support for Turkish citizens in their pursuit of online freedom, Hide My Ass will extend free services to our Turkish customers while this ban continues. See below for details of how to claim your free VPN time.

With our service you can bypass censorship and access any blocked website, like Twitter in this case. Once you connect to HMA! with any of your devices (mobile or desktop), you can choose one of our servers located in 65 countries and you will obtain an IP address which will hide your real location.  Your traffic will be encrypted and you will enjoy free and uncensored access to any website you wish while you are virtually residing in different country.

As with all such attempts to control the internet, this one is ultimately doomed to fail, as there will always be gaping holes in the blocks.  We urge all VPN users in Turkey to spread the word and help their less knowledgeable friends, co-workers and neighbours avoid this stupid ban.

How to claim – terms of this offer

All existing active customers who have an HMA! Pro VPN subscription purchased through SMS from a Turkish mobile phone number will automatically have their subscription extended.

Other existing active customers based in Turkey, who wish to have an extension, should contact HMA! customer support by email with the words “Twitter Ban” in the subject line.  Our customer support will verify your location by IP address and credit card billing details. If you did not pay by credit card, we may request other proof of address.

New customers (including inactive users) in Turkey should purchase a one week subscription via SMS which will be automatically extended. You can order via SMS by visiting the HMA! order page.

This offer is for a maximum of 6 months from 21 March 2014 or the end of the Turkish Twitter ban, whichever is sooner.

The terms of this offer may be amended at any time by Hide My Ass!

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Hide My Ass	Visit Provider
Strong VPN	Visit Provider
Switch VPN	Visit Provider
Pure VPN	Visit Provider
IPVanish VPN	Visit Provider
Hotspot Shield Elite	Visit Provider

 

Liverpool researchers create contagious airborne Wi-Fi virus ‘Chameleon’

Computer scientists at the University of Liverpool have designed and demonstrated that a so-called “virus” can attack Wi-Fi networks, and found that it can spread “as efficiently as the common cold spreads between humans”.

 

Chameleon travels across Wi-Fi networks via Access Points (APs) – which are devices that connect many homes and businesses to Wi-Fi networks.  Many of the passwords on these devices are set as default and largely unchanged, so the “virus” is able to gain control easily, and steal private and confidential information, and passwords.

Chameleon is “able to avoid detection and identify the points at which Wi-Fi access is least protected by encryption and passwords”, according to the University’s website. They found that densely populated areas allowed the virus to spread more quickly and areas that offer Wi-Fi such as in hotels, airports and cafes were more vulnerable to attack since they offer no encryption security.

Apparently, Chameleon doesn’t affect how a Wi-Fi connection works, instead it stealthily collects users’ data and then moves on to find other Wi-Fi access points to infect.

Chameleon is only ever found in Wi-Fi networks, therefore, it can easily avoid detection from anti-virus software.

The scientists at Liverpool are working on software to prevent such attacks from taking place.

HMA! Quality Assurance manager, Zoran Tadic says “Whilst this is not a real virus, but a self-replicating router firmware that attacks routers which are not password protected, HMA! encrypts all data traffic with every VPN connection, so that even if a router is hijacked the traffic is unwatchable.  All data is encrypted at the start and end points of the tunnel (the user’s computer and our VPN server).  The best way to ensure your router doesn’t get hijacked is to protect it by changing the login credentials (change the default ones) and use one of the standard Wi-Fi encryption protocols (WPA/WPA2 are the strongest ones). This would make every router 100% safe from Chameleon”

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Hide My Ass	Visit Provider
Strong VPN	Visit Provider
Switch VPN	Visit Provider
Pure VPN	Visit Provider
IPVanish VPN	Visit Provider
Hotspot Shield Elite	Visit Provider

 

ICC World Cup T20 2014 Fixture, Score, Live Streaming Online

   ICC (International Cricket Council) World Cup Twenty20 2014 will be the 5th season of World Cup T20, which will be hosted by Bangladesh during 16th March to 6th April, 2014. This will be the first ever international cricket tournament which will be hosted by Bangladesh totally. Previously, Sri Lanka hosted this tournament on 2012. So, this is the second time that an Asian country will have the honour to host such a big tournament of cricket.
Cricket is being more and more exciting day by day. After the introduction of Twenty20 version of cricket, the popularity of this game has increased to a higher level among people of all age groups. Tournaments like BPL, IPL, SLPL etc have become popular and brought more and more people to the cricket ground. As World Cup is a battle of countries, this tournament will surely be a success. Bangladesh has a huge number of cricket loving people who will enjoy each and every match of this tournament and will make it a success.

TEAMS:

This tournament will consist of 10 teams. 8 of these teams has been confirmed according to the ICC Cricket Rating. Bangladesh & Zimbabwe have to play a pre-tournament qualifying round with another 6 teams. The 2 winners of this round will join the 8 teams in the main tournament.

There is another twist! These 6 teams will be confirmed by another qualifying round. 16 teams will fight for these 6 positions, starting from 15th November, 2013. So, ultimately this tournament will consist of 16+2+8=24 teams.

QUALIFIER GROUP A	QUALIFIER GROUP B
IRELAND	AFGHANISTAN
CANADA	BERMUDA
HONG KONG	DENMARK
ITALY	NETHERLANDS
NAMIBIA	NEPAL
UGANDA	KENYA
USA	PAPUA NEW GUINEA
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES	SCOTLAND

Meanwhile, 6 teams have been selected through the Qualifier Round. These teams will play a Pre-Tournament Series with Bangladesh & Zimbabwe according to the following groups:

PRE-TOURNAMENT GROUP A	PRE-TOURNAMENT GROUP B
BANGLADESH	ZIMBABWE
AFGHANISTAN	IRELAND
NEPAL	NETHERLANDS
HONG KONG	UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

2 Teams will be selected from the above table. Thus, the actual groups of ICC T20 World Cup will be the following:

GROUP 1	GROUP 2
ENGLAND	AUSTRALIA
NEW ZEALAND	INDIA
SOUTH AFRICA	PAKISTAN
SRI ALANKA	WEST INDIES
GROUP B WINNER	GROUP A WINNER

VENUES:

There will be 35 matches in total in this tournament. These matches will be hosted by three (3) venues: Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium [Dhaka], Zohur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium [Chittagong] & Sylhet Divisional Stadium [Sylhet].

DHAKA	CHITTAGONG	SYLHET
Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium	Zohur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium	Sylhet Divisional Stadium
Capacity: 26,000	Capacity: 20,000	Capacity: 22,000

The Qualifier Matches between 16 teams will be hosted by United Arab Emirates. Pre-Tournament Matches among 8 teams will be held in Sylhet & Chittagong. Then Group 1 matches will be held in Dhaka & Group 2 matches will be held in Chittagong.

FIXTURE/SCHEDULE:

PRE-TOURNAMENT GROUP MATCHES
MATCH	DATE	TIME [BST]	TEAM	TEAM	VENUE	WINNER
1	16/03/2014	11:00 A.M	BAN	AFG	DHAKA
2	16/03/2014	3:00 P.M	HK	NEP	CHITTAGONG
3	17/03/2014	11:00 A.M	IRE	ZIM	SYLHET
4	17/03/2014	3:00 P.M	NET	UAA	SYLHET
5	18/03/2014	11:00 A.M	AFG	HK	CHITTAGONG
6	18/03/2014	3:00 P.M	BAN	NEP	CHITTAGONG
7	19/03/2014	11:00 A.M	NET	ZIM	SYLHET
8	19/03/2014	3:00 P.M	IRE	UAA	SYLHET
9	20/03/2014	11:00 A.M	AFG	NEP	CHITTAGONG
10	20/03/2014	3:00 P.M	BAN	HK	CHITTAGONG
11	21/03/2014	7:00 A.M	UAA	ZIM	SYLHET
12	21/03/2014	11:00 A.M	IRE	NET	SYLHET

TOURNAMENT MATCHES
MATCH	DATE	TIME [BST]	TEAM	TEAM	VENUE	WINNER
13	21/03/2014	3:00 P.M	IND	PAK	DHAKA
14	22/03/2014	11:00 A.M	SL	SA	CHITTAGONG
15	22/03/2014	3:00 P.M	ENG	NZ	CHITTAGONG
16	23/03/2014	11:00 A.M	PAK	AUS	DHAKA
17	23/03/2014	3:00 P.M	WI	IND	DHAKA
18	24/03/2014	11:00 A.M	NZ	SA	CHITTAGONG
19	24/03/2014	3:00 P.M	SL	TBD	CHITTAGONG
20	25/03/2014	3:00 P.M	TBD	WI	DHAKA
21	27/03/2014	11:00 A.M	SA	TBD	CHITTAGONG
22	27/03/2014	3:00 P.M	ENG	SL	CHITTAGONG
23	28/03/2014	11:00 A.M	WI	AUS	DHAKA
24	28/03/2014	3:00 P.M	TBD	IND	DHAKA
25	29/03/2014	11:00 A.M	NZ	TBD	CHITTAGONG
26	29/03/2014	3:00 P.M	ENG	SA	CHITTAGONG
27	30/03/2014	12:00 P.M	PAK	TBD	DHAKA
28	30/03/2014	4:00 P.M	IND	AUS	DHAKA
29	31/03/2014	12:00 P.M	ENG	TBD	CHITTAGONG
30	31/03/2014	4:00 P.M	SL	NZ	CHITTAGONG
31	1/04/2014	12:00 P.M	TBD	AUS	DHAKA
32	1/04/2014	4:00 P.M	WI	PAK	DHAKA
SEMI-FINAL 1	3/04/2014	3:30 P.M	TBD	TBD	DHAKA
SEMI-FINAL 2	4/04/2014	3:30 P.M	TBD	TBD	DHAKA
FINAL	6/04/2014	3:30 P.M	TBD	TBD	DHAKA