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Great changes coming to Identity Cloaker!
Today I just want to write about some important changes, or rather improvements, that are coming to Identity Cloaker 😉
1. New version of the Identity Cloaker client application will be available within the next few days.
Technically, this new version will not add any important new features. Except for one… There will now be a demo mode available. In other words, everyone will now be able to download Identity Cloaker and test the demo before ordering.
This may sound like a small change but it is not. Because Identity Cloaker will now be a freely downloadable application, it will become much more widespread and will also get one of those “Certified No-Spyware Included” certificates from the software download portals such as download.com etc.
For those who have been hesitating to order a subscription (despite there is a money back guarantee of course), this is great news because it will make it possible for everyone to test Identity Cloaker without any kind of commitment.
I know how great Identity Cloaker is and I want to share this experience with the whole world 🙂 Really, with the raising number of rubish software calling itself “proxy switcher”, I find it necessary to show the world the difference. Keep in mind, Identity Cloaker is not a proxy switcher. It may look so on the surface, but it’s an exponentially more complex system under the hood. That’s whyt it works so well.
It’s great news for our affiliates too. Many demo testers = more exposure = more brand building = more confidence = more sales = more affiliate commissions.
2. 10-days Trial accounts
In addition to our standard 3,6, and 12-month subscription, there will also now be a 10-day trial subscription priced at 4.97 EURo, without automatic rebilling at the end of the 10 day period.
I have realized that for some people it may be too difficult to order the 3-month subscription at 27.97 EURo because they simply don’t know what they are buying. So in addition to the demo version (demo mode actually), there will now also be this very inexpensive trial subscription. That should allow just about anyone to try Identity Cloaker and I believe it will also lead to affiliate commissions increase.
Why? Because some customers now simply order the most affordable 3-month subscription because they are not willing to go straight for the 12-month one despite that it has a much lower per month price. In other words, they don’t want to “risk” too much money if something went wrong.
This makes sense, despite of the money back guarantee, because most people do not want to spend money for something they have yet to see. So now some (or most?) customers will order the very cheap trial subscription and then after they test everything, they will order the 6 or 12-month subscription with confidence. They will know what they are buying. It’s a win-win situation.
3. Minor sales page improvements
Again, this information is important most for our valued affiliates. There will be some mostly minor improvements on the sales page soon (within a week). I plan to order an ecover graphic and use some very catchy graphical elements. There will be changes in the sales page text as well – some parts will be somewhat extended. And there will be now the “Free download” selling point and some simple but effective landing pages for affiliates, focused at converting even some generic / not very targetted traffic.
That’s about it for now, more news coming soon…
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Sounds cool! Very technical though. I think you are very smart about
software but you need to make it simple for us Neanderthals to understand
what it does and why we need it.
Ughh. Make brain hirt. 😉
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Believe me, I *tried* to explain everything as simple as I could 😉 Identity Cloaker is a very complex thing in the background and it’s not the simplest thing in the world not to go into the technical details. But I think it’s quite well visualised on the “How it works” page, hopefully.
Anyway, I will be writing some more FAQs and improving the sales page soon so that should help too.
December 21st, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Hi,
I’ve found your website and read it through and it seems a nice service indeed. However, I still have some privacy-questions. I understand your service as follows:
my http-requests are first encrypted and send to one of your proxies, which then decrypts them and send them to the proper server. The reply which is received at your proxy is then resend (encrypted) to my pc (browser).
Now, don’t you need to keep files which connects my encrypted requests with the requests to the wanted webpage? Even if not, how can I be sure you don’t, since this will be the vital point in the privacy preservation. Also, if my ISP logs my requests to your website and the ISP connecting your proxy to the internet logs the requests from your proxy, there is still some matching possible, no?
Cheers,
Biscuit
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:06 am
Biscuit,
Those are some good questions and as an IT guy and the Identity Cloaker administrator, I wished more people would be so security/privacy conscious as you 😉
Identity Cloaker uses 2 different technologies to “forward” the data. The first one is called SSH Tunneling, the second one OpenVPN. The main client application uses the SSH Tunneling technology.
This one works similarly to what you described. First a “Secure Tunnel” is established between your PC and one of the physical servers in the Identity Cloaker network. Then it forwards the requests to software called Squid proxy server which is running on the physical server. The proxy server software then forwards the request to the destination website/server which then in return sends the reply back to the proxy server software and this data then flows back to your PC through the secured SSH tunnel.
OK, I know this may sound a bit confusing…sorry.
You are correct that at one point the physical server has to have an unencrypted copy of the data passed through it. However, this data is stored just for a very short while in the server memory only because the harddrive caching is disabled in the proxy server software configuration.
But you asked a very good question. How could you trust me that the data is really not stored on the server harddrives and that nothing bad is done with it? Well, this is not easy to answer. Honestly, you can never be 100% sure. There has to be some trust and credibility Identity Cloaker earns over time, I realize that.
You will face a similar problem with, for example, webhosting companies or email providers. Do you trust your webhosting company they will not do anything wrong with the data you store on their servers? Do you trust your email account provider that they will ensure that none of their employees does not sell your email data to spammers or hackers?
I realize that it may take some time before Identity Cloaker earns so much credibility that people will feel confident that what I say here is 100% true. I have also been considering other means, such as 3rd party privacy audits – a trusted 3rd party auditor company would have access to the physical servers, scanned the installed software periodically and confirmed that there was nothing wrong going on.
I believe this would work well because any skilled server administrator would soon discrover if what I said here was not true. But I need to find one. Someone I believe will not do anything wrong on the servers and at the same time, someone that has so high moral credibility that most other people trust her/him as well. And at a reasonable price too. Technically, those could be even 2 or more different persons coming from different backgrounds.
I’ll try asking some of the people at the Electronic Frontier Foundation website, perhaps they could give me some suggestions. Also, do not hesitate to contact me if you know about someone who could take this role. She/he would need to have high moral credibility and linux server administration skills. Someone with experience from the IT/network security field would probably be best.
I’ve been also considering other solutions, such as signing a legally binding document saying I will not do anything bad with the data, but I don’t feel this would work best for most customers.
You also asked another good question:
>> Also, if my ISP logs my requests to your website and the ISP connecting your proxy to the internet logs the requests from your proxy, there is still some matching possible, no? << The short answer is: NO. This would be possible with traditional proxy servers and with web proxy servers (those webs where you enter the URL you want to visit and hit submit). But Identity Cloaker works differently, see my explanation above. The difference here is that with Identity Cloaker, you do not connect to the proxy server directly. Instead, you first establish the encrypted tunnel between your PC and the physical server via SSH. The ISP can only see that you created this SSH tunnel if they are skilled enough. It does not even connect to the IdentityCloaker.com domain directly but to a "harmless sounding" mirror domain name. The data in the tunnel is encrypted and neither your ISP, nor your company boss or a hacker can see the unencrypted version. The whole path between your PC and the Identity Cloaker server is encrypted and nobody can see which websites you visited and the data you downloaded or uploaded. The OpenVPN technology works, in this particular case, similarly. Let me know if you want me to explain the differences in details. The main difference in the Identity Cloaker implementation of the SSH Tunneling & OpenVPN technology is that with OpenVPN you can encrypt any Internet communication, not just web browsing. You can use it for Skype, online games, Outlook etc. Simply anything. You get the idea. But it has some disadvantages so Identity Cloaker offers both technologies to get the best of the two worlds. OK, this got a bit longer than I expected...sorry for that 😉 Please do not hesitate to tell me if I forgot to answer one or more of your questions, Best regards, Tomas France IdentityCloaker.com Administrator
March 12th, 2009 at 5:14 am
Just wanted to tell you the 10-day trial period is a great idea. You were right on the nose with how it’d work: I signed up for it because if it turned out your service was crappy, I figured that I’d be out 7 dollars at most. But your service is so great that you’ve sold me on the year membership once my trial expires. If it weren’t for the trial I’d probably not have ordered any service at all!
July 9th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Hi, I’ve been using the 14 day IdentityCloaker trial version for a number of days and I’m finding the UK proxy servers extremely slow. This is a deal breaker for me, do you do a refund on the 14 day version?
July 9th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Hello,
The refund guarantee covers all subscription plans, the trial one including. However, it may be best to email me at admin[-AT*]identitycloaker.com or contact us via the form at http://www.identitycloaker.com/cms/contact-us and I will personally do my best to find out why the connection is slow for you.
Also, in the next 2 days, there will be third server available in the UK. But again, there may be several reasons it is slow for you, including bad peering from your ISP so it’s best to contact me directly.
Tomas France
IdentityCloaker.com Administrator
March 6th, 2010 at 7:21 am
Thanks for this post, answers a bunch of questions I was having.
May 5th, 2010 at 7:31 am
Hi, I’ve been using the 14 day IdentityCloaker trial version for a number of days and I’m finding the UK proxy servers extremely slow. This is a deal breaker for me, do you do a refund on the 14 day version?
May 5th, 2010 at 11:59 am
jewelry: The refund is possible for any subscription of course. However, I can assure you the servers are very fast with plenty of bandwidth and CPU resources. Have you tried the non-encrypted mode too? Please disconnect Identity Cloaker, go to http://www.speedtest.net , choose one of their UK test servers on the map and send me the results reported. Then do the same with Identity Cloaker connected in the non-encryption mode.
Tomas
P.S. Please send me the results of your tests via helpdesk or the Contact Us form.
November 15th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Prob using Skype
So I have got identitycloaker working, i know this as I can access and download skype from their website, but I am unable to make calls to landlines from the programme. I am not technical wiz so am assuming identity cloaker is doing something to IE and Google that it is not set up to do with Skype. Is there a way to resolve this prob.
P.s. I am in the UAE. Hence the need for IdentityCloaker and Skype probs. I do have credit and skype works outside of the emirates.
Help will be greatly appreciated, im fed up of pouring money into the monopolised phone network here!