Two Slashes

I was shocked to sit down at my computer this morning only to find that AT&T had gone above and beyond the call of duty with their self-imposed 4chan ban.  Now, I’m not a fan or visitor of the site in any way, but I am still a little irked that they thought it was necessary to restrict access to (parts of) the site.  I’m not a fan of censorship, especially because anything “blocked” because it “could be used for ill intent” could also be used for good.  (Of course, the good uses of 4chan are up in the air, but I digress…)

However, having just heard about a new VPN service promising unlimited and unfiltered anonymized access to the Internet at the awesome price of free, I figured it might be good to get an account and look into the service before AT&T decided that there were any more sites they wanted to block access to.

ItsHidden may not be the most creative name I’ve heard for a VPN provider, and the website could use some retooling (and perhaps a proofreader), but they do function exactly as promised, and without requiring the installation of any software to get online.

Taking into account a comparison in performance between my raw DSL line, a tethered connection with my cell phone, and the VPN through both, there is a noticeable loss in the amount of available bandwidth.  Of course, this is expected when the traffic is going to the Netherlands and back (I ran all speed tests against the same server in Chicago), but it’s not unbearably slow.  Of course, this could change once the public gets its hands on it and the word spreads a little (not unlike ImageShack’s torrent downloader).

I do have a slight concern with the privacy you “gain” by using this service, and whether it might be worth looking into, though.  ItsHidden seems to meter your VPN usage.  I don’t know if this is the first hint at a freemium model they might be looking to pursue, or whether they simply think it’s a numbers game, but I question the meaning of its existence.  Furthermore, any user of the VPN should be worried about the decrypted traffic on ItsHidden’s end.  It would be trivial for them to sniff any data off the wire before they pass it along, and, even though they claim they don’t collect any information, I can’t help but wonder whether they’re actually doing so.

Realistically, I can’t say I trust a company that doesn’t run spell-check on their own site enough to think they would be a good idea for any mission critical data (and why you would be allowing yourself to tunnel through something you can’t verify the setup of anyway is beyond me), but if you need a VPN to get at anything unimportant or for your file downloading needs, this might be a reasonable solution for you to look into.  (Read:  This might be a good idea if you’re heading to DEFCON but don’t have any other means available to secure yourself.)

Update (7/29): According to a bunch of news outlets, AT&T was acting on behalf of customers they thought were being targeted by a denial-of-service attack.  While the thought of protecting your customers is a nice one, a heads-up might have made things a little happier and calmer for everyone.  Heck, maybe communicating through the proper channels could have picked up some help from moot and the 4chan crew.  So, AT&T, the gesture was nice, but you really can’t go around trying to pull stunts like that without letting people know.  One giant secret is enough.