HideMyAss VPN

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

March Madness is here!

Yes, it’s that time again where the top college basketball teams in the US compete in the 2014 NCAA Tournament, better known as March Madness. This year, eight to ten teams have a good shot at winning the tournament, which is a lot more than in other years.  So, will Wichita State, San Diego State, Harvard: The Ivy Leaguers or as some predict the Florida Gators, take the 2014 NCAA title?


The action begins with the “First Four” games, or the “play-in” games on March 18 and 19 in Dayton.  The “second round” games begin on March 20-21 and the third on 22 and 23 March.
The Final Four will take place in Arlington, Texas at the AT&T Stadium, and the national championship game will be played on April 7.  Click here for a full version of the March Madness bracket 

If you still have room for even more excitement and you can stop biting your nails for a second, you could walk off with a cool $1 billion, yes ONE BILLION dollars. Warren Buffett is offering this incredible sum to any fan who can pick the perfect bracket this year. The competition is open to the first 15 million people to sign up and at the moment it appears there are still spaces available.
However don’t get too excited, The Washington Post calculated that someone picking all 63 games correctly are 9.2 quintillion-to-1. Still, I guess there’s a chance!

If you live overseas, or you’re travelling during the tournament and are unable to watch the games on your laptop,  iPad, iPhone or Android device you will be relieved to know that you can, by using a VPN.  With a VPN, (namely HMA! Pro VPN) you can watch all the games from wherever you are around the world, bypassing all the restrictions on streaming sites. A VPN will cause the USA ISP into thinking that you are physically in the US, so any online activity you perform is as if you are in the USA, allowing you to be part of the action.

So, sit back, make sure you have enough snacks to see you through, it’s basketball time!
For more information about HMA! Pro VPN click here


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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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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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