It's called Road Warrior. Well, it's definitely suited for the Road Warrioress, too. It's an encryption service from Cryptohippie, and considered the top of the line for encrypting the long-haul traveler's computer, email, communications, etc.
It's not cheap. What do you expect for military-grade technology in easy-to-use form? But Cryptohippie gives you a money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied with their encryption and secure email account included in the Road Warrior package.
Cryptohippie says: It creates a strongly encrypted connection from your computer to the Cryptohippie anonymity network. From there, your traffic passes through at least two national jurisdictions, loses all association with your identifiers and emerges from our network at a distant location. But, even with all of this going on, you can surf, check your email, use Skype, and everything else exactly as you have been. Unless you reveal it yourself, no one can see who you are or what your data may be.
Features of Road Warrior include, according to Cryptohippie:
Easy to install and use software
Available for Windows, MacOS X, Linux
Works in almost any environment
High speed (3.5Mbit/s median)
All protection methods enabled
Protects websurfing, email, VoIP
Closed group network access
Includes secure email account
Includes secure network disk
Includes secure instant messaging
Install on multiple computers allowed
25 GB of monthly traffic included
Telephone and email support
And the cost is USD275 per year.
I'm no techie. Don't ask me to explain all the technology. While I've had and used my own computers for three decades now, and consider myself fairly proficient, I still use my 'puter like a toaster: I put in my "bread" and expect to get out "toast." You're better off researching this one yourself to get whatever details you need.
But you certainly want to take a look at this.
And if you have any suggestions for other top-notch encryption services, pass them along here so we can all take advantage. After all, most of us Road Warrioresses are working, running computer-based businesses while we play Perpetual Traveler, and need to protect ourselves and our data. Certainly everyone deserves to be able to say "I love you" to Pop, Hubby, Darling Daughter or Whoever without half the rest of the world listening in.
May your road rise to meet you (without spies stalking you!)
Ann
Since the explosive revelations last month regarding PRISM, NSA's monumental worldwide invasion of communications privacy, people are changing a lot of computer habits. Goodbye google, hello StartPage. The number of queries on the DuckDuckGo search engine doubled in less than three weeks. Cryptocat's volume doubled within that time.
Steven Spielberg's Minority Report is alive and well and living in the White House, in NSA, and in their inconceivably voluminous facility under construction in Utah. It's worse than Orwellian. 1984 might have been the wrong date, but certainly the right prescient track.
Here are some changes you can make to your internet habits:
DuckDuckGo
does not store personally identifiable information
about search queries on its servers. You can see exactly how your
Google search information is saved and sold, thanks to DuckDuckGo's simple diagram
found on its website: http://donttrack.us/. Check out duckduckgo.com.
StartPage is a non-US based third-party search engine. When you search with
StartPage, they remove all the identifying information from your online query
and then submit it anonymously to Google themselves. They get the results and
give them to you, keeping your information completely private. Your IP address
is never stored… your visit is not logged and they don’t place any tracking
cookies on your browser. They make it clear on their website that anyone seeking to subpoena data on users can forget it - there is no data! Set StartPage as your homepage! Simply go to startpage.com.
You can keep your intranet chats private by using Cryptocat. This site encrypts
all of its users’ messages so that notes between you and family, friends,
colleagues or employees stay off the radar. It might not be available for all browsers, but check out https://crypto.cat/
Besides governments which copy your inbox, hackers, identity thieves, advertisers, and others are after your personal information. An offshore email account is not free, though the fees are generally reasonable. Here are some reputable, relatively inexpensive options to consider.
https://secure.runbox.com/ Based in Norway, which has strong privacy laws. Runbox is generally considered a cheap and quality option.
Instead of a US-based cloud storage or data storage company such as DropBox or Google, consider free alternatives based in a friendlier jurisdiction. Perhaps the best offshore data storage option is Switzerland-based Wuala. Wuala encrypts and stores your files on servers in Switzerland and offers 5 GB of free storage space.
More to come on some easy-to-access, easy-to-use alternatives for the Road Warrioress!
May your road rise to meet you (without spies)!
Ann
