HotSpotVPN – Better and Cheaper

HotspotVPN by AnchorFree is what I use when I travel and want to make sure my internet usage is secure. At $29.95 it’s a bargain and although they have a free version, I’m willing to pay for it so that I don’t get the ads and get a faster connection.

Recently they added support for Android and allow you to install it on 5 different devices.

Here is their Main FAQ.

Mobile FAQ

Security Away from Home – ProXPN

Summary – can’t get it to work on a Nexus 7! Their support says, “It is likely that there’s a problem with either your ISP or the configuration of your local access point. Please check your local wireless router to ensure that port 1723 TCP and the GRE protocol 47 are open – PPTP VPN must have these open on the local end in order for it to work properly.” I haven’t tried to fix this on my router because I bascially wanted this for when I travel. I certainly can’t ask Starbucks or any other public wifi to let me have access to their router. Also note from Steve Gibson and Security Now – he says that the PPTP protocol they use is crackable. It’s better than no security at all, but it is possible to crack in a day or two. I also noticed that HotspotVPN works fine – so I’m skeptical that I have a router problem.

When you’re away from your home network, it’s always dangerous using someone else’s wireless network – especially if it’s not secured. One way around this is to use a VPN – Virtual Private Network. One VPN I recently heard about is ProXPN.

It creates a secure network wherever you are so that you can do all your internet business and still be safe where ever you are.

If you are just using a computer/laptop, they do have a Free version, but if you want to use it on an iPhone or Android device you have to pay for it. Unfortunately it’s not on itunes or in the Google Play store right now. You have to set it up manually.

If you use the code sn20 you can save an extra 20%.

AGGRAVATION – I emailed their Contact email address and both emails were sent back. Apparently you have to register as a customer before they will even talk to you.

I called them and left a message – they did get back with me the same day.

I did signup with them, but have now requested a refund. If it doesn’t work, what’s the point?

Google Voice – Trouble and Partial Solution

I’ve lately noticed trouble making international phone calls using Google Voice. My normal procedure is this.

• Open Contacts under the Google Voice page.
• This opens up a different tab.
• Search for the person I want to call.
• Select them.
• On their list of phone numbers – choose the “phone icon.” and make sure it calls your Home phone.
• When I’ve done this in the past, it rings my home phone and I do my phone call.
• Lately however this procedure does not work. It acts as if it is ringing my Home Phone, but the phone never rings.

Here’s a work around which does work.

• Follow the procedure above, but instead of calling the phone number, Copy the phone number to your clipboard. 
• Go back to your Google Voice tab.
• Click on the Red Call button.
• Paste in your phone number.
• Make sure your home phone is chosen.
• Click Connect.

Kids and Credit Card Charges on the Internet.

How-to Geek has a great article on how to close down the possible credit card charges which may occur when your child uses a device with internet access. Here’s the link.

How to Prevent Your Kids From Spending Thousands of Dollars on In-App Purchases

Phone Use in the United Kingdom

We are planning a trip into the United Kingdom and I wanted to avoid the exorbitant phone fees that one can incur if you use your normal cell phone. (Note – I have a friend in France and he was charged $50 for a 3 minute phone call using his regular phone.) Here are some of the things I learned.

• In the U.K. and Europe you need a GSM phone(here’s an example). Since I use T-Mobile, it already is a GSM phone and has a SIM card. I have a simple Samsung T259 phone. If you don’t have a GSM phone you can buy one for less than $50 on Amazon.
• You need to get the phone unlocked.  There are several ways to unlock a phone, but the simplest is to call your provider and ask that they unlock the phone. I called T-Mobile and they said they would do it, but that it might take up to two weeks. They have to get an unlock code from the manufacturer. So – that means – plan in advance and not wait until the last minute to unlock the phone. In reality it only took less than 24 hours for T-Mobile to send me the procedure and unlock code.
• Each phone has a unique unlock code so unfortunately your friends code won’t work for your phone.
• For anyone with a T259 here’s what to type in.#7465625*638*THEN EIGHT DIGIT UNLOCK CODE AND THEN #
• I received the instructions from T-Mobile and they didn’t work. Luckily Youtube came to the rescue. See the video at the end. It did work. You unlock the phone without any SIM installed.
• Once you get the phone unlocked then you can buy a UK SIM card. If you can’t unlock your phone for some reason you can buy unlocked GSM phones on Amazon or Telestial.com. Note – Telestial now has a deal – $49 for phone and SIM card.
• You need to buy a SIM card for the UK. It appears that the local UK SIM cards are more economical that the Europe or Internal SIM cards.The local UK card charges 3p to 15 p to call UK numbers and no per minute on receiving calls. The International cards charge 29 cents per minute for calling and receiving calls. Telestial.com seems to be one of the places to buy the card. Obviously if you are traveling all over Europe and International card might make more sense.

Below is a video on the Telestial SIM card.

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How to Unlock a T-Mobile phone.

Jungle Disk – Online Backup used by Steve

One of my security mentors mentioned that he used Jungle Disk for online backup. There are a number of pluses for this service.

• You can use as many computers as you want. Many plans charge you per computer.
• It only costs $2 to $3/month plus storage costs of 15 cents/gb/month. There may be some charge for data transfers.
• It use AES 256 encryption – you have the only key.
• You can back up as much as you want. There are no limits.
• Your files are kept on Rackspace® Cloud Files or Amazon S3. The choice is yours. There is a price differential.

Start a YouTube Video at a Specific Time in WordPress

One of the problems I’ve found with YouTube is that the URL they give you for a specific time in your video doesn’t work in WordPress. There is a solution however.

You have to convert your time from minutes until seconds and change the wording just a bit.

In my case the original code looked like this.

(http://youtu.be/FIX6YUrMrDE?t=5m25s)

I changed the coding to this.

(http://youtu.be/FIX6YUrMrDE?&start=325)

It now works perfectly.

Thanks to http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/ for this tip.