Do you wanna configure large numbers of iOS devices at once? Apple made some tools available for enterprise customers. Find them here:
» iOS Enterprise Deployment: https://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/
» iPhone Configuration Utility (Mac OS X): http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1465
» iPhone Configuration Utility (MS Windows): http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1466
Perfect Privacy reports today, that a member of the staff of the well known international VPN provider Perfect Privacy has been police searched last friday (August 20th).
H-Security writes:
The search warrant was reportedly issued on suspicion that unknown perpetrators may have routed potentially criminal communications via the servers in the German city of Erfurt.
Perfect Privacy writes:
The servers have so far not been confiscated. We decided, however, to disable all services (OpenVPN, PPTP VPN, L2TP/IPSec VPN, SOCKS5, SQUID) in Erfurt temporarily in order to give those of our members, who have elevated security needs, time to read this announcement and to evaluate the risks. It is not known to us whether the authorities initiated measures such as telecommunication monitoring in Erfurt. (..)
It is not known (..) whether the authorities initiated measures such as telecommunication monitoring in Erfurt.
Users with security concerns better do not connect via Erfurt at the moment.
The cat and mouse game goes into its next round. After the media companies have fought a quite successful lobby war against basic liberties, the operators of the PirateBay are now testing a service that anonymizes your traces as internet user.
The Business Model
3,000 internet users are right now in beta testing. 180,000 people world wide have registered. This is a solid business model as this service will cost €5 per month. With an conservatively estimated amount of users of 200,000 this is €12 million per year.
The Technology
The technology is well known as VPN (virtual private network). It means you connect to a specific network (this is called tunneling). From this network you then access the internet. Every website you access is thus being accessed through this network. Inside this VPN you get a new IP address and this is where iPredator becomes interesting for say civil rights activists in coutries that heavily censor internet pages – like iranian, chinese, and soon german activists and journalists aswell. In case you are using Peer2Peer networks to download media files there is a good chance, your IP has already been logged by one of the firms persecuting copyright infringement worldwide.
Persecution
Through your IP address you can be traced and for example ripped-off sued for copyright infringement – in Germany for example by a company called ProMedia (watch german Spiegel-TV article about ProMedia here). We will not delve into the doubtful business model of dinosaurs among the media companies, but all this comes to an end soon. All those persecuting companies will have to find a new business model as they will not be able to go after people loving music in the future anymore. And chinese, iranian, and german censorship will be able to be circumvented with just a click.
Addendum
Please pay attention to the legal situation in your country, living in countries with censorship: be extremely cautious. If you are living in the western consumption penetrated countries: consider going to the concerts and buying music. Otherwise your artist will not be able to make music in the future. You’d better listen to more intelligent independent music anyway, instead of those distributed by slowly dieing dinosaur media companies.
In the end remember one thing: using VPN technology to camouflage your traces does not make downloading music from illegal sources legal. Don’t do that.
Vodafone yesterday announced to offer a data-plan for customers who actually bought an unlocked iPhone in a foreign country. The data-plan requires a normal fon-plan by vodafone, means: the iPhone plan is an upgrade. The interesting point is the price.
This flatrate costs 9,95€/month surcharge to a current fon-plan. It gets slowed down from HDSPA to EDGE/GPRS speeds after having transmitted 500MBytes.
In contrast to original T-Mobile Germany iPhone plans Vodafone does not permit using Voice-Over-IP (VoIP), Instant Messaging (IM) or VPN – means they tolerate that you even jailbreak your iPhone in order to install third party apps, that are not provided through the official Apple AppStore.
The struggle for the cheapest iPhone plan has begun.