The initiative, known as The Promo Bay, attracted 10,000 applications in a matter of months, and has exposed dozens of artists to hundreds of millions of views, at zero cost to them.

Many bands have been featured to date, but the group currently featured on the front page could be one of the best ‘fits’ to date.

Dubioza Kolektiv are an already successful band that have been selling records and playing festivals all around Europe for the past 11 years. Their views on the music industry are a great match for The Pirate Bay.

“We live in a fast changing world and the music industry is really struggling to maintain the monopolistic role they’ve enjoyed for decades,” Dubioza bass player Vedran Mujagić told TorrentFreak.

“They perceive this freedom of expression and ability to share culture and knowledge in the digital age as a major threat to their profits and they employ really ugly methods in trying to suppress these practices.”

The seven piece group, who hail from Bosnia and Herzegovina and promote their style as a fusion of hip-hop, reggae, dub and rock, are currently front and center on The Promo Bay with a track from their new EP, and things are working out perfectly.

“We sent the video of our song ‘No Escape (from Balkans)’ and our new EP ‘Happy Machine’ to Pirate Bay and now the video has been on the TPB homepage for a little more than 48 hours. It resulted in big traffic and more than 200,000 views of our video on YouTube – and it keeps growing,” Vedran reveals.

“This was really great because the song and Dubioza Kolektiv got exposed to people who would otherwise might never have heard of the band – from Siberia to South Africa. Reactions and comments have been really positive so far.”

But while ‘No Escape‘ has captured the big views so far, the second track from the EP has been flying under the radar. It’s an infectious ska-influenced romp that was written with the jailed founders of The Pirate Bay in mind.

“Free.mp3 (The Pirate Bay Song) is dedicated to founders of thepiratebay.org website,” the band reveals. “Gottfrid Svartholm Warg a.k.a. Anakata and who is currently being held in solitary confinement and is facing six-year prison sentence in Denmark and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi a.k.a. brokep who is incarcerated in Sweden.”

The track, which is upbeat, cheerful and extremely catchy, begins with a couple of BitTorrent terms and recounts how file-sharing scares the music industry.

Lines including ‘We don’t give a shit about a copyright law we take it from the rich and give it to the poor’ give way to Games of Thrones downloads and name checks for Kim Dotcom, Barack Obama and Wikileaks.

“We admire enthusiasts like people from The Pirate Bay, people like Edward Snowden, people from Wikileaks – who are fighting big corporations and governments – not for profit but because they believe in these ideals, even at the price of their own personal freedoms. It is always inspiring to see people who are finding the way to outsmart the system,” Vedran says.

Dubioza say they aim to deliver positivity “that hits you like a blast of fresh air” and they’ve certainly hit the mark with their attitudes towards file-sharing. Both the new EP and their entire discography have been uploaded in their name on the The Pirate Bay in the past few days and are mirrored on sites including KickassTorrents.

Those enjoying the style and the band’s ethos can join them on tour for the rest of the month.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The Internet entrepreneur could not run for election himself, but as the party’s president and visionary he would gain significant political power.

Today New Zealanders went out to vote and the Internet Party was listed on the ballots in an alliance with the Mana Party.

Voting booths officially closed at 7 PM local time and the provisional results show that Internet Mana failed to win a seat.

The party managed 1.26% of the total vote, somewhat short of the 5% required to enter the New Zealand Parliament. A disappointing result after Dotcom spent more than $2 million on the party and its election campaign.

Over the past several weeks Internet Mana received a lot of attention in the press. Dotcom actively campaigned against his arch-rival Prime Minister John Key, and earlier this week the party organized the “Moment of Truth” during which Edward Snowden, Glen Greenwald and Julian Assange all criticized New Zealand’s secret spying efforts.

Despite the heavy critique of the Prime Minister, Key’s National Party became the overwhelming winner of the elections with nearly half of all votes.

Following the defeat Dotcom apologized to Mana leader Hone Harawira and the Maori people. Mr Harawira lost his Parliament seat and Dotcom suggests that he may be to blame for the disappointing result.

“I take full responsibility,” Dotcom said in a short speech. “The brand Kim Dotcom was poisoned … and I did not see that before the last couple of weeks.”

After his speech Dotcom left the building, declining interview requests from local reporters.

In a tweet Dotcom later congratulated the Prime Minister and his National Party on their win.

“New Zealanders have chosen National and John Key to lead. I congratulate the Prime Minister. Please do your best for all Kiwis. Good luck,” he wrote.

Responding to the results Internet Party leader Laila Harre said that the party’s policy went unreported in the media, which mostly focused on scandals and the dirty games being played.

Harre thanked Dotcom for the opportunity to shake up New Zealand politics. She said that Dotcom became the symbol of Internet Mana, but that the party likely underestimated the impact this would have on the campaign.

“There’s been a two-year campaign of vilification of Kim and that was clearly impacted on our campaign,” Harre noted.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

One of his claims is that despite the reservations of those in New Zealand’s intelligence departments, Dotcom was allowed to become a resident of the country. This, the entrepreneur says, was carried out to pin him down in a friendly location so that he could be dealt with by the United States.

This morning, at his Moment of Truth event, Dotcom rolled out big guns including journalist Glenn Greenwald, Wikileaks’ Julian Assange and even Edward Snowden himself to deliver his “bombshell”. The latter appeared via video links, connections which Dotcom said we’re being run through a new encrypted browser-based platform under development at Mega.

Much of the discussion centered around the alleged unlawful domestic surveillance of New Zealand citizens by their own Government, but the panel frequently weaved in elements of Dotcom’s own unique situation.

“We share the same prosecutor, so I understand what is going on there, on a very personal level,” Julian Assange said of Dotcom.

“[The United States Government] is trying to apply US law in as many countries as possible, applying their law in New Zealand to coerce and pluck out people to other states,” Assange said.

“When you are able to control their police forces you have succeeded in annexing that country. It’s a problem for me personally and it’s a problem for Kim Dotcom.”

Dotcom’s human rights lawyer Robert Amsterdam spoke at length on the perils of the Trans Pacific Partnership and criticized the New Zealand Government for its treatment of Dotcom.

“What they did [to Kim Dotcom during the 2012 raid] is so beyond the pale that the leader of that democratic government should have resigned on the spot that day,” Amsterdam said.

The event was highly polished and was well received by those in attendance, but failed to deliver on one key front. Dotcom previously said that he would present “absolutely concrete” evidence that Prime Minister John Key knew about him earlier than he had claimed. In the event, nothing remotely of that nature was presented.

However, several hours before the Moment of Truth got off the ground, New Zealand media began reporting that Dotcom would reveal an email at the event, one that would prove that Hollywood had an arrangement with Key to allow Dotcom into the country in order to extradite him to the United States.

The email in question, dated October 27, 2010, was allegedly sent by current Warner Bros CEO Kevin Tsujihara to Michael Ellis of the MPA/MPAA.

Tsujihara is one of the Warner executives the company sent to New Zealand in 2010 to deal with a dispute that was putting at risk the filming of the Hobbit movies in the country. During his visit Tsujihara met John Key and the email purports to report on one of those meetings.

“Hi Mike. We had a really good meeting with the Prime Minister. He’s a fan and we’re getting what we came for,” the leaked copy of the email reads.

“Your groundwork in New Zealand is paying off. I see strong support for our anti-piracy effort. John Key told me in private that they are granting Dotcom residency despite pushback from officials about his criminal past. His AG will do everything in his power to assist us with our case. VIP treatment and then a one-way ticket to Virginia.

“This is a game changer. The DOJ is against the Hong Kong option. No confidence in the Chinese. Great job,” the email concludes.

But while an email of this nature would have indeed warranted a “bombshell” billing, the Moment of Truth concluded without it or any other similar evidence being presented. Even before the event began, Warner Bros were on record describing the email as a fake.

“Kevin Tsujihara did not write or send the alleged email, and he never had any such conversation with Prime Minister Key,” said Paul McGuire, Warner Bros.’ senior vice president for worldwide communications.

“The alleged email is a fabrication,” he added.

The lack of the promised big reveal is fairly dramatic in itself. It’s certainly possible that Dotcom’s team lost confidence and pulled the reveal at the last minute, which would be a wise move if its authenticity was in doubt.

If the email is indeed proven to be a fake, big questions will need to be answered by the person who provided it because up until very recently Dotcom was staking his shirt on it. If it’s genuine, and proving that will be easier said than done now, we’ll definitely hear more as the weeks unfold.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

To prevent their IP-addresses from being visible to the rest of the Internet, millions of people have signed up to a VPN service. Using a VPN allows users to use the Internet anonymously and prevent snooping.

Unfortunately, not all VPN services are as anonymous as they claim.

Following a high-profile case of an individual using an ‘anonymous’ VPN service that turned out to be not so private, TorrentFreak decided to ask a selection of VPN services some tough questions.

By popular demand we now present the third iteration of our VPN services “logging” review. In addition to questions about logging policies we also asked VPN providers about their stance towards file-sharing traffic, and what they believe the most secure VPN is.

Last update: October 7, 2014 (added partial Russian translation)

—

1. Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you to match an IP-address and a time stamp to a user of your service? If so, exactly what information do you hold and for how long?

2. Under what jurisdictions does your company operate and under what exact circumstances will you share the information you hold with a 3rd party?

3. What tools are used to monitor and mitigate abuse of your service?

4. In the event you receive a DMCA takedown notice or European equivalent, how are these handled?

5. What steps are taken when a valid court order requires your company to identify an active user of your service?

6. Is BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic allowed on all servers? If not, why?

7. Which payment systems do you use and how are these linked to individual user accounts?

8. What is the most secure VPN connection and encryption algorithm you would recommend to your users?

—

What follows is the list of responses from the VPN services, in their own words. Providers who didn’t answer our questions directly or failed by logging everything were excluded. Please note, however, that several VPN companies listed here do log to some extent. The order of the lists holds no value.

Private Internet Access

1. We absolutely do not log any traffic nor session data of any kind, period. We have worked hard to meticulously fork all daemons that we utilize in order to achieve this functionality. It is definitely not an easy task, and we are very proud of our development team for helping Private Internet Access to achieve this unique ability.

2. We operate out of the US which is one of the few, if only, countries without a mandatory data retention law. We explored several other jurisdictions with the help of our professional legal team, and the US is still ideal for privacy-based VPN services.

We severely scrutinize the validity of any and all legal information requests. That being said, since we do not hold any traffic nor session data, we are unable to provide any information to any third-party. Our commitment and mission to preserve privacy is second to none.

3. We do not monitor any traffic, period. We block IPs/ports as needed to mitigate abuse when we receive a valid abuse notification.

4. We do not host any content and are therefore unable to remove any of said content. Additionally, our mission is to preserve and restore privacy on the Internet and society. As such, since we do not log or monitor anything, we’re unable to identify any users of our service.

5. Once again, we do not log any traffic or session data. Additionally, unlike the EU and many other countries, our users are protected by legal definition. For this reason, we’re unable to identify any user of our service. Lastly, consumer protection laws exist in the US, unlike many other countries. We must abide by our advertised privacy policy.

6. We do not discriminate against any kind of traffic/protocol on any of our servers, period. We believe in a free, open, and uncensored internet.

7. Bitcoin, Ripple, PayPal, Google Play (Mobile), OKPay, CashU, Amazon and any major Gift Card. We support plenty of anonymous payment methods. For this reason, the highest risk users should definitely use Bitcoin, Ripple or a major gift card with an anonymous e-mail account when subscribing to our privacy service.

8. We’re the only provider to date that provides a plethora of encryption cipher options. We recommend, mostly, using AES-128, SHA1 and RSA2048.

Private Internet Access website

TorGuard

1. TorGuard does not store any IP address or time stamps on any VPN and proxy servers, not even for a second. Further, we do not store any logs or time stamps on user authentication servers connected to the VPN. In this way it is not even possible to match an external time stamp to a user that was simultaneously logged in. Because the VPN servers utilize a shared IP configuration, there can be hundreds of users sharing the same IP at any given moment further obfuscating the ability to single out any specific user on the network.

2. TorGuard is a privately owned company with parent ownership based in Nevis and our headquarters currently located in the US. Our legal representation at the moment is comfortable with the current corporate structuring however we wouldn’t hesitate to move all operations internationally should the ground shift beneath our feet. We now offer VPN access in 23+ countries worldwide and maintain all customer billing servers well outside US borders.

We would only be forced to communicate with a third-party in the event that our legal team received a court ordered subpoena to do so. This has yet to happen, however if it did we would proceed with complete transparency and further explain the nature of TorGuard’s shared VPN configuration. We have no logs to investigate, and thus no information to share.

3. Our network team uses commercial monitoring software with custom scripts to keep an eye on individual server load and service status/uptime so we can identify problems as fast as possible. If abuse reports are received from an upstream provider, we block it by employing various levels of filtering and global firewall rules to large clusters of servers. Instead of back tracing abuse by logging, our team mitigates things in real-time. We have a responsibility to provide fast, abuse-free VPN services for our clients and have perfected these methods over time.

4. In the event of receiving a DMCA notice, the request is immediately processed by our abuse team. Because it is impossible for us to locate which user on the server is actually responsible for the violation, we temporarily block the infringing server and apply global rules depending on the nature of the content and the server responsible. The system we use for filtering certain content is similar to keyword blocking but with much more accuracy. This ensures the content in question to no longer pass through the server and satisfies requirements from our bandwidth providers.

5. Due to the nature of shared VPN services and how our network is configured, it is not technically possible to effectively identity or single out one active user from a single IP address. If our legal department received a valid subpoena, we would proceed with complete transparency from day one. Our team is prepared to defend our client’s right to privacy to the fullest extent of the law.

6. BitTorrent is only allowed on select server locations. TorGuard now offers a variety of protocols like http/socks proxies, OpenVPN, SSH Tunnels, SSTP VPN and Stealth VPN (DPI Bypass), with each connection method serving a very specific purpose for usage. Since BitTorrent is largely bandwidth intensive, we do not encourage torrent usage on all servers. Locations that are optimized for torrent traffic include endpoints in: Canada, Netherlands, Iceland, Sweden, Romania, Russia and select servers in Hong Kong. This is a wide range of locations that works efficiently regardless of the continent you are trying to torrent from.

7. We currently accept payments through all forms of credit or debit card, PayPal, OKPAY, and Bitcoin. During checkout we may ask the user to verify a billing phone and address but this is simply to prevent credit card fraud, spammers, and keep the network running fast and clean. After payment it is possible to change this to something generic that offers more privacy. No VPN or Proxy usage can be linked back to a billing account due to the fact we hold absolutely no levels of logging on any one of our servers, not even timestamps!

8. For best security we advise clients to choose OpenVPN connections only, and if higher encryption is called for use AES256 bit. This option is available on many locations and offers excellent security without degrading performance. For those that are looking to defeat Deep Packet Inspection firewalls (DPI) like what is encountered in countries such as China or Iran, TorGuard offers “Stealth” VPN connections in the Netherlands, UK and Canada. Stealth connections feature OpenVPN obfuscation technology that causes VPN traffic to appear as regular connections, allowing VPN access even behind the most strict corporate wifi networks or government regulated ISPs.

TorGuard website

IPVanish

1. IPVanish has a no-log policy. We keep no traffic logs.

2. IPVanish is headquartered in the US and thus operates under US law.

3. IPVanish has no monitoring in place. To elaborate, IPVanish does not sniff or monitor any user’s traffic or activity for any reason.

4. IPVanish keeps no logs of any user’s activity and responds accordingly.

5. IPVanish, like every other company, has to follow the law in order to remain in business. Only US law applies.

6. P2P is permitted. IPVanish in fact does not block or throttle any ports, protocols, servers or any type of traffic whatsoever.

7. PayPal and all major credit cards are accepted. Payments and product use are in no way linked. User authentication and billing info are help on completely different and independent platforms.

8. OpenVPN generally provides the strongest encryption algorithm, so that is the recommended encryption protocol. IPVanish also allows a choice between TCP and UDP, and UDP is generally recommended for better speed.

IPVanish website

BTGuard

1. We do not keep any logs whatsoever.

2. The jurisdiction is Canada. Since we do not have log files, we have no information to share. We do not communicate with any third parties. The only event in which we would even communicate with a third-party is if we received a court order. We would then be forced to notify them we have no information. This has not happened yet.

3. If serious abuse is reported we enable tcpdump to confirm the abuse and locate the user. These dumps are immediately removed. If the user is abusing our service they will be terminated permanently but we have never shared user information with a 3rd party.

4. We do not have any open incoming ports, so it’s not possible for us to “takedown” any broadcasting content.

5. We take every step within the law to fight such an order.

6. Yes, all types of traffic our allowed with our services.

7. We accept PayPal and Bitcoin. All payments are linked to users accounts because they have to be for disputes and refunds.

8. 256-bit AES is the most secure. However 128-bit blowfish is plenty good. If you’re concerned about surveillance agencies such as the NSA, their capabilities are shrouded in secrecy and claiming to be able to protect you is offering you nothing but speculation. As far as what’s publicly available for deciphering encryption, both of the encryptions I mentioned are more than sufficient.

BTGuard website

Privacy.io

1. We do not log any information on our VPN servers. The only scenario is if a technical issue arises, but we request permission from the user first, and we only do it for the duration of the job, and then it is removed.

2. We are in the process of moving jurisdictions away from Australia at present as we are unsure what our current government plans to do in regards to our privacy. We have not decided where yet.

3. Only SMTP port 25 is filtered to mitigate spam, but we are working on some tools to make it easier for users to send mail.

4. Any DMCA request is ignored, as we have no logs to do anything about them.

5. Same as above, as we do not log, so we are unable to provide any information. If the law attempts to make us do such things, we will move our business to a location where that cannot occur, and if that fails we will close up shop before we provide any information.

6. All protocols are allowed with our service, with the only exception of SMTP port 25 currently being filtered.

7. At present we only accept PayPal and CC (processed by PayPal), but we are looking into alternative types of payments. We go out of our way to make sure that PayPal transactions are not linked to the users, we generate a unique key per transaction to verify payment for the account is made, and then nuke that unique key. Bitcoin and Litecoin are also on the agenda.

8. At present we offer 128 bit for PPTP and 256 bit for OpenVPN, We plan to offer stronger encryption for the security conscious.

Privacy.io website

VikingVPN

1. No. We run a zero knowledge network and are unable to tie a user to an IP address.

2. United States, they don’t have data retention laws, despite their draconian surveillance programs. The only information we share with anyone is billing information to our payment gateway. This can be anonymized by using a pre-paid anonymous card. If asked to share specific data about our users and their habits, we would be unable to do so, because we don’t have any logs of that data.

3. That is mostly confidential information. However, we can assure our users that we do not use logging to achieve this goal.

4. In the event of a DMCA notice, we send out the DMCA policy published on our website. We haven’t yet received a VALID DMCA notice.

5. We exhaust all legal options to protect our users. Failing that, we would provide all of our logs, which do not actually exist. If required to wiretap a user under a National Security Letter, we have a passively triggered Warrant Canary. We would also likely choose to shut down our service and put it up elsewhere.

6. Yes. Those ports are all open, and we have no data caps.

7. We currently only take credit cards. Our payment provider is far more restrictive than we ever imagined they would be. We’re still trying to change payment providers. Fortunately, by using a pre-paid credit card, you can still have totally anonymous service from us.

8. A strong handshake (either RSA-4096+ or a non-standard elliptic curve as the NIST curves are suspect). A strong cipher such as AES-256-CBC or AES-256-GCM encryption (NOT EDE MODE). At least SHA1 for data integrity checks. SHA2 and the newly adopted SHA3 (Skein) hash functions are also fine, but slower and provide no real extra assurances of data integrity, and provide no further security beyond SHA1. The OpenVPN HMAC firewall option to harden the protocol against Man-in-the-Middle and Man-on-the-Side attacks.

VikingVPN website

IVPN

1. IVPN’s top priority is the privacy of its customers and therefor we do not store any connection logs or any other log that could be used to associate a connection to a customer.

2. IVPN is incorporated in Malta. We would ignore any request to share data unless it was served by a legal authority with jurisdiction in Malta in which case we would inform them that we don’t have the data to share. If we were served a subpoena which compelled us to log traffic we would find a way to inform our customers and relocate to a new jurisdiction.

3. We use a tool called PSAD to mitigate attacks originating from customers on our network. We also use rate-limiting in iptables to mitigate SPAM.

4. We ensure that our network providers understand the nature of our business and that we do not host any content. As a condition of the safe harbor provisions they are required to inform us of each infringement which includes the date, title of the content and the IP address of the gateway through which it was downloaded. We simply respond to each notice confirming that we do not host the content in question.

5. Assuming the court order is requesting an identity based on a timestamp and IP, our legal department would respond that we don’t have any record of the user’s identity nor are we legally compelled to do so.

6. We ‘allow’ BitTorrent on all servers except gateways based in the USA. Our USA network providers are required to inform us of each copyright infringement and are required to process our response putting undue strain on their support resources (hundreds per day). For this reason providers won’t host our servers in the USA unless we take measures to mitigate P2P activity.

7. We currently accept Bitcoin, Cash and PayPal. No information relating to a customers payment account is stored with the exception of automated PayPal subscriptions where we are required to store the subscription ID in order to assign it to an invoice (only for the duration of the subscription after which it is deleted). Of course PayPal will always maintain a record that you have sent funds to IVPN but that is all they have. If you need to be anonymous to IVPN and don’t wish to be identified as a customer then we recommend using Bitcoin or cash.

8. We recommend and offer OpenVPN using the strongest AES-256 cipher. For key exchange and authentication 4096-bit RSA keys are used.

IVPN website

PrivatVPN

1. We don’t keep ANY logs that allow us or a 3rd party to match an IP address and a time stamp to a user our service. The only thing we log are e-mails and user names but it’s not possible to bind an activity on the Internet to a user.

2. We operate in Swedish jurisdiction. Since we do not log any IP addresses we have nothing to disclose. Circumstances doesn’t matter in this case, we have no information regarding our customers’ IP addresses and activity on the Internet. Therefore we have no information to share with any 3rd party.

3. If there’s abuse, we advise that service to block our IP in the first instance, and second, we can block traffic to the abused service.

4. This depends on the country in which we’re receiving a DMCA takedown. For example, we’ve received a DMCA takedown for UK and Finland and our response was to close P2P traffic in those countries.

5. If we get a court order to monitor a specific IP then we need to do it, and this applies to every VPN company out there.

6. Yes, we allow Torrent traffic.

7. PayPal, Payson and Plimus. Every payment has an order number, which is linked to a user. Otherwise we wouldn’t know who has made a payment. To be clear, you can’t link a payment to an IP address you get from us.

8. OpenVPN TUN with AES-256. On top is a 2048-bit DH key.

PrivatVPN website

PRQ

1. No. Wo do not log anything and we only require a working e-mail address to be a customer.

2. Swedish. We do not share information with anyone.

3. Not disclosed.

4. Put it in the trash where it belongs!

5. None, since we do not have any customer information and no logs.

6. We host anything as long as it’s not SPAM related or child porn.

7. Visa/Mastercard, Bitcoin, PayPal. No correlation between payment data and customer data.

8. We provide OpenVPN services (along with dedicated servers and other hosting services).

PRQ website

tigerVPN

1. Absolutely not! We built tigerVPN to purge all data once the transmission of a IP package was completed successfully. Its impossible to trace back any customer. On top of that we decided to use shared IPs in order to further randomize and anonymize our customers. The combination of having absolutely no logs at all and multiple customers per IP, wipes our customers digital footprint

2. We are a limited liability company in Slovakia. Slovakia does not have any data retention programs and furthermore encourage ISP’s to protect their customers privacy on the net. We are not required to share any information with 3rd party hence it would be illegal thanks to the law of telecom secrecy.

3. Since we don’t keep logs, we can’t monitor abusive behavior, which is the price for building a customer secure environment!

4. We can’t comply since we can’t identify customers, therefore it’s pointless to follow any requests. We have a specific folder for these eMails ;-)

5. Same as above. We seriously can’t tell which customer did what, when, where, at any given time.

6. It’s allowed on all servers although we gently ask our customers to use either Romania or Netherlands. Some infrastructure service providers do not want file sharing so it happened to us that we were asked to move our servers due to file sharing. We found some reliable partners in Romania and Netherlands which tolerate p2p so we kindly ask our customers to use these server parks.

7. Customers can pay with Visa, Mastercard and Debit. On top of that we also use PayPal. We use hash keys and tokens to identify a payment but it’s not logged or linked to the customer. We had to do this anyway hence we are a PCI Level 1 compliant merchant. Therefore we are not allowed to store any card or payment data with the records of our customers. These keys are pointless for anyone else so there is no chance to build a connection.

8. We offer PPTP, L2TP and OpenVPN, while out of nature OpenVPN comes with the highest encryption and algorithm. L2TP and OpenVPN are 256bit SSL encrypted while PPTP comes with a solid 128bit. Although our customers are individual and have their own sense of why and what to use, we recommend L2TP as solid protocol. It’s less geeky and more secure than PPTP, but our customers can pick any of them in all the 47 network nodes around the globe.

tigerVPN website

Mullvad

1. No. This would make both us and our users more vulnerable so we
certainly don’t. To make it harder to watch the activities of an IP address from the outside we also have many users share each address, both for IPv4 and our upcoming IPv6 support.

2. Swedish jurisdiction. Under no circumstance we will share information with a third-party. First of all we take pains to not actually possess information that could be of interest to third parties, to the extent possible. In the end there is no practical way for the Swedish government to get information about our users from us.

3. We don’t monitor our users. In the rare cases of such egregious network abuse that we can’t help but notice (such as DoS attacks) we stop it using basic network tools.

4. There is no such Swedish law that is applicable to us.

5. We make sure not to store sensitive information that can be tied to publicly available information, so that we have nothing to give out. We believe it is not possible in Swedish law to construct a court order that would compel us to actually give out information about our
users. Not that we would anyway. We started this service for political reasons and would rather discontinue it than having it work against its purpose.

6. Yes.

7. Bitcoin (we were the first service to accept it), cash (in the mail), bank transfers, and PayPal / credit cards. Payments are tied to accounts but accounts are just random numbers with no personal information attached that users can create at will. With the anonymous payments possible with cash and Bitcoin it can be anonymous all the way.

8. We use OpenVPN. We also provide PPTP because some people want it but we strongly recommend against it. Encryption algorithms and key lengths are important but often get way too much attention at the expense of other important but harder to measure things such as leaks and computer security.

Mullvad website

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Today BitTorrent Inc. contributes with the release of BitTorrent Bleep, a communication tool that allows people to exchange information without the need for any central servers. Combined with state of the art end-to-end encryption, the company sees Bleep as the ideal tool to evade government snooping.

Bleep’s main advantage over some other encrypted messaging applications is the absence of central servers. This means that there are no logs stored, all metadata goes through other peers in the network.

“Many messaging apps are advertising privacy and security by offering end-to-end encryption for messages. But when it comes to handling metadata, they are still leaving their users exposed,” BitTorrent’s Farid Fadaie explains.

“We reimagined how modern messaging should work. Our platform enables us to offer features in Bleep that are unique and meaningfully different from what is currently available.”

The application’s development is still in the early stages and the current release only works on Windows 7 and 8. Support for other operating systems including popular mobile platforms will follow in the future.

Aspiring Bleep users can create an account via an email or mobile phone number, but an incognito mode without the need to provide any personal details is also supported.

The new messaging app is not the only ‘breach safe’ tool the company is currently working on. Last year BitTorrent launched its Sync application which provides a secure alternative to centralized cloud backup solutions such as Dropbox and Google Drive.

BitTorrent Inc. is inviting people to test the new Bleep application, but warns there are still some bugs.

Those who want to give BitTorrent Bleep a try can head over to BitTorrent’s experiments section to sign up for the pre-Alpha release.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

And then they move ahead with a bill that does the exact opposite.

To wit: In Sweden, in the week after the European Elections, a temporary and controversial wiretapping bill was made permanent. It may look like a coincidence. Then again, Peter Sunde, the spokesperson of the Pirate Bay, was arrested in the same week.

That’s another coincidence, just as when the Appeals Court hearings for The Pirate Bay mock trial which were slated for the week right after an election. And there was another coincidence when the evaluation of the illegal Data Retention Directive was to be presented right after the elections, rather than facing the music and abolishing it once it was declared illegal.

There are many more examples.

And then those career politicians usher more warm words over the activists for liberty – people who are personally responsible for you and me having some of our liberties we wouldn’t have otherwise. Let’s name a few of them.

Assange. Brown. Svartholm-Warg. Hammond. Sunde. Manning.

All of these have provided exemplary transparency and resistance to power grabs by overreaching and shameless governments. Each and every one of us owes a significant amount of liberty to each of these individuals. They also have another thing in common: They are all confined to a small room, their freedom of movement gone, their liberty shackled.

There are many more who find it impossible to return to their home country after such exemplary civic duty. Snowden. Appelbaum. Many anonymous people who have chosen to leave. The list just goes on.

Activism just isn’t enough. The fate of our best and brightest activists can be seen right here. As an activity, on its own, it’s not producing the necessary results. Not on its own.

It’s at this point that we need to look closer at the behavior of career politicians.

It’s important to realize that the first problem that a career politician tries to solve is how to get elected. The second problem a career politician tries to solve is how to get re-elected. Whatever comes in third place is so far behind the first two that it’ll never really surface.

In short, unless you threaten politicians’ jobs over their dismantling of liberty, they’ll not notice in the slightest but just smile at your proposals, praise you for engaging in civic society, kiss some babies, and then introduce more surveillance.

That’s why activism for liberty remains extremely necessary. That’s also why activism remains not sufficient. We absolutely, positively need to put politicians’ jobs on the line over Orwelling the world we live in.

That’s why the Pirate Party chose the political route, putting Orwellian politicians’ jobs on the line. But the party as a movement can’t function without tens of thousands of activists who also help in the common cause.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In 2012 and following a breakthrough update, the cost of creating a PirateBox dropped from a very reasonable $100 to an extremely attractive $50. Anonymous offline file-sharing was now within everyone’s reach.

Since then PirateBox has gathered an extremely enthusiastic following, something which has spurred its developers on. Yesterday PirateBox delivered its v1.0 update and a brand new website so to celebrate the occasion TorrentFreak caught up with creator David Darts.

TF: PirateBox was warmly welcomed by the community in 2012. How has community feedback shaped the PirateBox project since?

DD: The community has had a big impact on the development of PirateBox. When I originally released the project, it was essentially just an offline browser-based file sharing system. My first prototype was basically a proof-of-concept – a light-weight python web server running on a hacked Seagate Dockstar network adapter connected to a pocket wireless router.

Almost immediately after publishing the project online, I started receiving feedback from developers and hackers around the world who were interested in using and contributing to the project. My inbox also started filling up with support requests, which is why I set up the PirateBox Discussion Forum.

While I believe in the Free Open Source ethos of providing tech support for my peers (I’ve been the beneficiary of this support many times), I simply couldn’t handle the volume of requests. Fortunately, the community stepped up and helped out with support (and testing, and development) through the discussion forum.

Many of the key features of the PirateBox, like the chat room and UI, have been co-developed by the community. Matthias Strubel, who is now the project’s lead developer, was one of the community members who reached out and joined the PirateBox team. He has really helped push the project forward.

TF: Has PirateBox been used in any unexpected or innovative ways?

DD: As designers know all too well, their creations are often used in ways they didn’t necessarily intend. The PirateBox is no exception.

It has been used by musicians and bands to distribute their music at festivals and gigs, by teachers to distribute and collect digital materials from students, and by emergency response workers and volunteers to distribute local first aid information and community updates. Conference organizers have used it to distribute conference materials and to provide local wireless commenting during presentations, and it’s been utilized by CryptoParty workshop volunteers to securely share cryptographic keys.

TF: How many users of PirateBox are there today?

DD: Well, we don’t track our users but the project has grown “rhizomatically” across several websites and languages so it’s a little tricky to estimate how many PirateBoxes are out in the wild today.

It is possible, and sometimes preferable, to distribute the PirateBox software locally (and anonymously) using a PirateBox and, because the boxes never go online, it’s impossible to really keep track of them. Generally speaking, this is a good thing.

TF: Technology is always on the move – which developments have most affected today’s PirateBox compared to the one that launched two years ago?

DD: Two big tech trends have helped push PirateBox 1.0 development forward: The proliferation of small screens, which is how we increasingly interact with the network and each other, and the increased availability of tiny, inexpensive computers (including wireless routers, single board systems like the Raspberry Pi and other embedded “Internet of things” devices) which are rapidly filling up our world.

Version 1.0 is thus designed with mobility and low cost hardware in mind. We’ve reworked the UI and based it on Twitter’s Bootstap so that the software plays nicely with small screens. And we’ve built PirateBox 1.0 to run natively on inexpensive hardware.

Another “technology” development that helped increase interest in the PirateBox project was the confirmation through the Snowden leaks last year that the US government was operating near universal mass-surveillance programs around the world, often in partnership or, at least, with the complicit support of several large technology and Internet companies. While this has obviously raised very serious questions and concerns around the world, these revelations have at least helped push important conversations about privacy, surveillance, censorship, freedom, etc. to the forefront. These are all issues that the PirateBox project engages with and thus it has helped inspire new users to join the project.

TF: What is so special about the release of PirateBox 1.0, why should existing users upgrade, and what do new users have to look forward to?

DD: Along with the increased stability of PirateBox 1.0, the key new feature is Matthias Strubel’s “box-installer” which radically simplifies the process of building or upgrading a PirateBox. It is now possible to build a new PirateBox in just a few easy steps.

One of my favorite new features of PirateBox 1.0 is the UPnP media server which starts streaming video and audio files over the network as soon as they’ve been uploaded to the box. I’ve actually been using this feature for awhile. It works perfectly as a backend to XBMC for instance and is also a great way of streaming movies to your mobile devices when traveling.

PirateBox 1.0 also offers a image/message bullet board called Kareha by default which is similar to the software used on 4chan. This means that PirateBox 1.0 offers 4chan in a box functionality, which I think is pretty cool. And of course, it also comes with a chat room and browser-based file sharing system.

TF: What role do you see PirateBox fulfilling in the future and what plans do you have for the next 12 months?

DD: The holy grail of offline networking is wireless mesh and we’ve been experimenting with it in the PirateBox. Matthias has been playing with Forban over the last year and we’ve successfully deployed and connected small sets of PirateBoxes using the B.A.T.M.A.N. protocol. This is really just an experimental feature at this point but it is something we’re planning to keep developing.

I’ve also been experimenting with connecting the PirateBox to the Internet, which, in some ways, is counter to the philosophy of the project as an offline file sharing and communications system.

However, I also think there’s real value in providing people with ways to connect online that help preserve their privacy. This is especially important for those who are less tech-savy and thus may not know how to protect themselves from tracking, etc. While the PirateBox will continue to be an offline file sharing and communications system, we may consider providing an optional feature in the future that allows it to be used online. Or this may become a new fork of the project…..

Interested in making your own PirateBox? Try here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

A new report published by Sandvine this morning sheds light on the most recent developments. As in previous years, the trend is one of BitTorrent losing its share of peak Internet traffic in the U.S. while continuing to grow in Europe.

However, there is a far more interesting trend hidden in the report, something which the traffic management company itself appears to have missed entirely. Comparing this year’s data to that of last year reveals that encrypted Internet traffic is booming.

The change is most pronounced in Europe where the percentage of encrypted Internet traffic during peak hours quadrupled from a measly 1.47% to 6.10% in a year. Since overall Internet traffic increased as well, the increase is even greater for the absolute bandwidth that’s consumed.

In North America the percentage of encrypted Internet traffic during peak hours increased as well, from 2.29% early last year to 3.80% this year.

Keeping in mind that absolute Internet traffic increases between 20% and 40% each year the bandwidth consumed by encrypted traffic doubled in this period.

The increase in encrypted traffic is a global phenomenon. In Latin America the share of bandwidth consumed by SSL shot up from 1.80% to 10.37% in a year. Also, a similar pattern emerges on mobile networks, where encrypted traffic is also booming.

The changes in encrypted traffic can be directly linked to the surveillance revelations of Edward Snowden. As a result, the number of users of VPN services and other anonymizers increased sharply. In addition, Google and other web services turned on SSL by default.

In previous years we revealed a similar trend among BitTorrent users, who increasingly searched for options to hide their download footprints in response to anti-piracy measures. A survey among Pirate Bay users, for example, revealed that 70% utilize a VPN or proxy, or are interested in doing so in the future.

It will be interesting to see how these trends develop in the years to come. In any case, it’s clear that Internet services and their users are becoming more aware of their privacy online, which is generally a good development.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Published on Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept, the new papers reveal internal NSA discussions over what can and cannot be monitored in various circumstances.

In Q&A‘s between NSA staff, Threat Operations Center Oversight and Compliance (NOC), and the NSA’s Office of General Council (OGC), torrent sites are mentioned on a number of occasions, with The Pirate Bay sitting front and center.

Tracking The Pirate Bay and its users

The first question concerns the querying of non US-based IP addresses which have been obtained from home soil.

“If we run across foreign malicious actors at home (spam email, router/IDS logs, torrent sites, etc) can we bring those IPs here and use the SIGINT [intelligence-gathering by interception] system to monitor these guys?” the member of staff asked.

“It might be okay,” NOC and OGC responded, “but wait for confirmation.”

The second instance came from a staff member asking questions over the monitoring of servers overseas, alongside the possibility that U.S. citizens may be using them.

“Is it okay to query against a foreign server known to be malicious even if there is a possibility that a US person could be using it as well? Example, thepiratebay.org,” the NSA employee wrote.

No problem, came the reply, but exercise caution.

“Okay to go after foreign servers which US people use also (with no defeats). But try to minimize to ‘post’ only, for example, to filter out non-pertinent information,” NOC and OGC wrote back.

From the documents it’s clear that the NSA sees both The Pirate Bay and Wikileaks as organizations that threaten U.S. security through their distribution of U.S. secrets. What follows is a question which seems to suggests that once a torrent has been released on The Pirate Bay, it’s possible to analyze traffic sent before the release was made in order to trace the leaker.

“[If a] list of .mil passwords [were] released to thepiratebay.org…can we go back into XKS-SIGINT (using a custom created fingerprint) to search for all traffic containing that password in foreign traffic just before the release? the NSA worker asked.

Tracking people using proxies to hide their activities

While many consider proxies as useful tools to mask their online activities, it has to be presumed that organizations such as the NSA have the ability to track individuals using even multiple instances. The next set of questions skip over the mechanics of how that might be possible (with the clear implication that it is) and jump straight to what is permissible.

[When an actor is]….posting to thepiratebay.org (a foreign web-server)….through multiple proxied hops, are we allowed to back-trace that communication even if it hops through US based proxies?” an NSA worker asked.

“In other words, back-trace the post from thepiratebay.org to a Chinese base proxy which came through a US based proxy, which came through another US based proxy, which came through a Russian based proxy etc”

“Assuming you mean via SIGINT metadata,” came the NOC response, “then SPCMA-trained [Supplemental Procedures Governing Communications Metadata Analysis] analysts would be able to use SPCMA-enabled tools to chain through U.S. based proxies. It is not authorized otherwise.”

While on the one hand these discussions suggest that some kind of effort is being made to protect US citizens from NSA spying, on the other it’s fairly obvious that they are being swept up en masse whether they like it or not.

Furthermore, the odds of being caught up in that dragnet only increase should U.S. citizens dare to become involved in organizations like Wikileaks or use torrent sites including The Pirate Bay. Worryingly, the threshold for becoming categorized as an associate of a “malicious foreign actor” appears to be lower than ever.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Sparked and guided by Aaron Swartz, the end result of the movement was nothing short of ground-breaking. The unity shown on January 18, 2012, led to Congress backing down and forcing some of the world’s most powerful copyright-focused companies into retreat. SOPA was done, but an even bigger issue was just around the corner.

Revelations by Edward Snowden, that unveiled a shocking level of mass surveillance being carried out by the U.S. government and its allies, caused turmoil around the world. Their plan was to become the all-seeing all-knowing eye, spying on communications everywhere and sucking up mind-boggling quantities of electronic data both on-and-offline.

These authorities now routinely spy on the Internet, telephone calls and other communication channels used by their very own citizens, undermining the basic level of privacy people believed would be upheld by their own democratically elected governments. The mantra that those who have nothing to hide have nothing to worry about holds no water, as entities including the NSA and GCHQ systematically spy wherever they like, whether their targets are suspected of crimes or not.

But today is a special day. Thousands of websites, this one included, will join together to demand progress towards restoring our right to privacy and the reigning in of mass surveillance. Two years after the historic SOPA protests, The Day We Fight Back has arrived.

Today’s anti-surveillance web protest, held in memory of hacktivist Aaron Swartz, is being headed up by a coalition including Demand Progress, Access, EFF, and sites such as Reddit, Mozilla and BoingBoing. It provides an unprecedented opportunity to fight back against the greatest invasion of privacy the world has ever known.

“Today the greatest threat to a free Internet, and broader free society, is the National Security Agency’s mass spying regime,” says David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress.

“If Aaron were alive he’d be on the front lines, fighting back against these practices that undermine our ability to engage with each other as genuinely free human beings.”

While Aaron is tragically no longer with us, all Internet users concerned about the activities of the NSA can step up to the front lines and fight back with a few clicks.

1. Visit TheDayWeFightBack.org
2. Sign up to indicate that you’ll participate and receive updates.
3. Install widgets on websites encouraging its visitors to fight back against surveillance.
4. Use the social media tools on the site to announce your participation.
5. Develop memes, tools, websites, and do whatever else you can to participate — and encourage others to do the same.

While a large proportion of Internet users have been blind-sided by the revelations of the past year, being monitored is something that those connected to the file-sharing scene have become aware of for a decade or more. Privacy solutions have existed for some time but it took the launch of the Pirate Party-affiliated Relakks VPN service in 2006 to really boost the awareness of encrypted communications in the file-sharing space. Today, privacy companies including Private Internet Access and BlackVPN will join the protests.

Many hundreds of thousands – millions – of file-sharers and other privacy conscious individuals currently and routinely encrypt their communications in order to mitigate the effects of online spying. But while that’s a good day-to-day solution, more needs to be done.

Fighting back requires people to contact politicians and lawmakers and urge them to engage on the issues of cyber surveillance and other dangers to the free Internet. But be warned. Unlike the fight against SOPA this battle won’t be over in a month or two. The Day We Fight Back will go on for much, much longer.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.