Monday, February 7, 2011

Protecting the Internet

Mullvad "simply bypasses everything between your computer and the real, unrestricted internet using an encrypted VPN tunnel. Anyone trying to monitor your internet connection will only see a strongly encrypted stream of data to one of the Mullvad servers. Anyone trying to trace the source of a communication will not see the true origin but only a Mullvad server. The technology used is OpenVPN using 2048-bit RSA and 128-bit Blowfish encryption."

Today I have started using Mullvad. I have chosen this particular VPN mainly because they accept payment in Bitcoin, the new decentralized P2P cryptocurrency which I hope will have a very big impact. After a few hours of use, I am quite happy with Mullvad. My IP is now in the Netherlands, and my connection seems as fast as usual.

I used to be a PGP user a few years ago. I had not used PGP for a few years, but today I have reinstalled PGP (actually GPG) and created a brand new key.

I am just a fat middle aged guy who uses to go sleep at 10 and does not have much to hide, so why am I using strong privacy tools? The answer is simple: I want to protect the free Internet that we love. I think the open and free Internet is one of the best things that have happened to our species, definitely one of the best things happened in my own lifetime. Now I see that the open and free Internet is under attack by big governments and big corporations that want to control it, and I think we should all fight for our right to privacy and free speech, even those of us who don't have much too hide. If many people use privacy and anonimity tools, the Internet will be much more difficult to control. See also my article on We must protect the Internet and the very interesting comment thread on the Space Collective site.

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