Last week I discussed how an increasingly monitored and intrusive internet has given rise to various darknets. These hidden corners of the internet are chiefly the domain of hackers, crackers, phreaks and geeks, but very recently a few companies have begun offering commercial darknet services to average computer users who are simply concerned about their online privacy. These services offer various degrees of privacy and anonymity to their customers, depending on individual needs. This week, we will look at a few of these services and analyze their value to mainstream computer users.

The first company is Secure-Tunnel located in Washington D.C. Although there are many types of privacy services, Secure-Tunnel offers only SSH Tunnel and CGI web-proxy. The SSH Tunnel is basically a poor-man’s VPN (virtual private network). It tunnels encrypted data between your machine and theirs, but each application that you use (web browser, FTP, etc) needs to be configured to work across it. The CGI web-proxy is SSL-encrypted and works from within your webbrowser (although the page rendering leaves something to be desired in the age of video and flash animation). Secure-Tunnel is cheap ($10/month), and easy to use for Windows and non-Windows users alike. They are blazingly fast (almost native speeds) and very reliable. Honestly, the only drawback is the fact that they currently have U.S.-only servers. That, plus the fact that they are located in America’s capitol city, makes the darknet community rather suspicious. But they are a skiddish lot to begin with, so I still recommend them for beginners, but exercise some caution if you’re a veteran.

I have a soft spot in my heart for this next service, although it doesn’t stack up very well next to the competition. It’s called Relakks, and it’s based out of Sweden. In fact, it’s brought to us by the same Swedes who run the infamous Pirate Bay (more on them next week).

Over the last few years they have delighted in thumbing their noses at authorities in the US who have tried to enforce American copyright law in Sweden. To that end, they have a number of online presences, all designed to drive the MPAA, RIAA, IFPI, and their cohorts stark, raving mad. There’s the Pirate Bay (their signature bittorrent website), Suprnova for more TV and movie goodies, an online streaming video site (coming soon), and finally there is Relakks. With only one core service, Relakks gets the job done quick and dirty. It’s also cheap at about $7 per month. Offering a classic VPN connection, Relakks uses the Microsoft-designed PPTP (point-to-point tunneling protocol) to pipeline and encrypt all data between your computer and theirs. (Check out issues concerning the security of pptp here.) In addition, your IP address is replaced by theirs, so your country of origin (to any website which traces your IP) appears to be Sweden. This is a HUGE benefit to users (particularly Americans) looking to take advantage of streaming multimedia that restricts IP addresses from certain countries. For example, well-known streaming-TV startup Joost offers a variety of television channels to it’s subscribers, but certain channels are unavailable in the U.S. due to licensing restrictions. Using Relakks can fix this. You can use the service to appear to be coming from Europe for the non-US TV channels, and switch the service off when you’d like to enjoy US-only channels. These are the benefits of using Relakks. The downsides however, are substantial. As many users have noted, the service can be unreliable and there is little communication from “the pirate powers that be” on system status or maintenance times. In addition, punching through certain home-routers seems to be an issue. All of this equals a possible frustrating end-user experience which is further complicated by the fact that there is little documentation (only an FAQ) and no user forum to elicit peer assistance. The icing on the cake happened when I emailed a question to them about connecting through my router. The response was a one-line cut-and-paste verbatim from the FAQ. With that final insult, I decided not to renew my subscription. Again, the Pirates are concerned primarily with providing quick and cheap access to internet anonymity. Customer service just doesn’t figure into the equation. It’s certainly one of the most popular services out there, so I’m sure they are doing something right. And I still like them because they are loud and proud about their position on copyrights. The internet world needs the anarchists at The Pirate Bay.

Next up is FindNot. They offer a full range of services (VPN, SSH tunnel, and CGI Proxy), and multiple non-U.S. servers. The problem, no matter which server you use, is speed. FindNot is simply not designed for broadband usage. Simple surfing is painful, but trying to stream Youtube or the like is torture. And that’s on their American servers. Using a non-U.S. server is virtually worthless. And if $14/month wasn’t enough for their intolerably slow speeds, you can upgrade to a broadband account for only $50/month! Are you serious? $50/month?! My ISP doesn’t charge me $50/month! FindNot gets an emphatic two thumbs down. Too expensive, too slow, and (by the way) their website was created by someone with severe A.D.D.

The last service I’ll talk about is my current favorite and a relative newbie to the darknet scene. Perfect Privacy is moderately priced ($14/month after converting from euros), but it offers a full range of security and anonymity services. More importantly, they offer top notch customer service. Perfect Privacy has detailed documentation (with diagrams and pictures!), a user forum, and email support that actually answers questions! They offer OpenVPN (the more secure successor to PPTP), SSH tunnels, and CGI proxy servers with IP’s located in four different countries (China, Australia, Russia, and the US). This variety is valuable because different users have different needs. Some want the full security of the VPN for surfing, IM, email, Skype, and what have you. Others only need their webbrowsing secured over SSH. And some just want to relocate their IP to another country without sacrificing speed through encryption. Best of all, it’s friendly to all operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac, etc). If I had a single complaint, it’s that they should offer a tiered pricing structure, based on which service you intend to use. Other than that, this is clearly my service of choice.

Internet privacy service is an emerging market whose current customers are early-adopters. However, the landscape is rapidly changing. More mainstream computer users are becoming aware of online privacy issues, especially in countries where free speech is being threatened. In response, more companies are “renting” VPN’s to the public as I have described above. The only danger in using these services is your assumption that your privacy is completely secure. In reality, the company you subscribe to becomes the one entity that sees everything you do online. Most say that they don’t log anything, but any of their claims involve a leap of faith. In fact, there are some in the darknet community that contend true anonymity can only come by eliminating the final link in the chain. TOR is one of a couple of free (as in beer and freedom) services that uses a public peer-to-peer model to achieve anonymity.

It can be slow, and the level of anonymity is debatable, but no single entity sees all of your data. It is a very different model to be sure, and as awareness of the privacy issue grows, I’m sure TOR and it’s brethren will continue to mature. In the words of the Freenet project:

“Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech”

Next week, we’ll take a look at the seedy under-belly of the darknet community: the file-traders!