Become Invisible for Net's sake
Two important steps you can take right now to become 'invisible for net's sake':
- Switch to the COPOWI Secure Email service to secure your email.
- Subscribe to the COPOWI Secure Surfing service to secure your Internet access.
The services outlined below can either be added to your Internet Access package or they can be ordered as standalone products. This means that everyone and anyone, anywhere can join the COPOWI project.
The COPOWI Secure Email service
Next to your surfing habits, nothing reveals more about you than the emails you send and receive. Yet every email you send can be monitored even altered as it traverses the Internet. Your privacy can be violated at many points not only by your ISP, neighbors, co-workers, corporations and government agencies but also by criminals and con artists.
With unsecured email you can become a target for hackers and identity thieves with potentially disastrous consequences.
Your email contents when combined with information stored in cookies can enable corporations to build very complete profiles of every user without their consent or knowledge and without disclosing how this information will be used or with whom it may be shared. This is why Google's latest acquisition of advertising company Doubleclick has raised serious concerns. Marc Rotenberg, President, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), writes: "Google is the internet's largest search company. Doubleclick is the internet's largest advertising company. Neither has done a particularly good job protecting online privacy and the combined company would pose a unique and substantial threat to the privacy interests of internet users around the globe."
COPOWI Secure Email mitigates this threat by providing not only secure storage of your email but also end-to-end encryption of emails through the SecureLine facility.
Check out the Features and Benefits for more details.
Cost: $4.50 per month standalone and $3.50 per month as part of an Internet Access package.
Ready to go invisible for net's sake with your email?
The COPOWI Secure Surfing service
Is your web surfing being monitored? You can bet on it! While many of us feel uneasy about this intrusion of privacy there has been no real compulsion to do anything about it until now. The net neutrality debate has highlighted how high the stakes are: we risk losing one of greatest advances in the history of humanity - the Internet.
The COPOWI Secure Surfing service mitigates this threat by providing encrypted tunnel to secure your surfing not only from the ISPs and the telcos, but also from the real and growing threat of online fraudsters.
How does it work?
The COPOWI Secure Surfing service is an anonymous proxy server which redirects all your web request through our high-speed servers.
Web sites that you visit will see the IP address of our proxy server not the IP of your connection. Additionally, all data transferred to and from your computer is secured through strong SSL encryption, making it very difficult if not impossible for anyone, including your ISP, to spy on your online activity.
The aim is not only to protect you from the real threat of online fraud (see risks below) but also to send a signal to the telcos that their proposal to create a tiered Internet is unacceptable. The more people become invisible in this way, the greater effort that will be needed to implement the proposed tiered Internet: imagine the resources required to break open 300,000 simultaneous encrypted connections so they can peer inside! Even if they manage to do so, we will develop new way of becoming invisible creating a cat and mouse situation.
In this way we hope to convince the telcos the best way to overcome the bandwidth crunch is to concentrate on developing new compression technologies and new ways of moving data, rather than risk fundamentally changing the free and open nature of the Internet.
What are the other risks?
Apart from the risk of losing the Internet as we know it, the risks include:
- Identify theft: By surfing insecurely you expose yourself to spammers and identify thieves who harvest IP addresses. Armed with live IP addresses they can infiltrate your computer using viruses, worms and trojans to steal your personal details including online banking details and other online accounts.
- Unethical corporations: You expose yourself to unethical corporations who collect data about you and then share and use this data without your knowledge or consent. You have no recourse if this data is wrong or prejudicial.
- Loss of privacy: Your surfing history can be stored for years. Again, you have no recourse if this information is wrong or prejudicial.
There are many more risks, but the point is you can virtually eliminate this risk by becoming "invisible for the net's sake" by subscribing to the COPOWI Secure Surfing service.
Requirements: On the Windows platform there is nothing to install. All you need to do is run the copowi-stunnel program (1.04 Mb) which creates a secure tunnel between your computer and our servers. You can put this program on a USB and use at work or even at Internet cafes to secure your online access.
For all unix flavours you will need to install the free and open source program called Stunnel. While Stunnel can run on a Mac we have not tested it, nor are able to support it at present. We'd be most interested in hearing from Mac users willing to test run this service.
Cost: $4.00 per month standalone and $3.50 per month as part of an Internet Access package.
Ready to become invisible for net's sake with your surfing?
Further reading: Privacy: Why our freedom depends on it?