VPN TC2027

With growing censorship and regulations threatening global internet freedom and security, in turn, we’ve seen an increasing number of services become available to protect your online web browsing.

What is a VPN?

Virtual Private Networks (or VPNs) have become increasingly popular in recent years for their ability to bypass government censorship and geo-blocked websites and services, and do so without giving away who is doing the bypassing.

For a VPN to do this, it creates what is known as a tunnel between you and the internet, encrypting your internet connection and stopping ISPs, hackers, and even the government from nosing through your browsing activity.

There are many types of VPN tunneling protocols that offer varying levels of security and other features. The most commonly used tunneling protocols in the VPN industry are PPTP, L2TP/IPSec, SSTP, and OpenVPN.

Which tunneling protocol should i use?

Even though it’s the fastest, you should steer clear of PPTP if you want to keep your internet data secure. L2TP/IPSec provides 256-bit encryption but is slower and struggles with firewalls given its fixed ports. SSTP, while very secure, is only available on Windows, and closed off from security checks for built-in backdoors.

OpenVPN, with its open source code, strong encryption, and ability to bypass firewalls, is the best tunneling protocol to keep your internet data secure. While it requires third-party software that isn’t available on all operating systems, for the most secure VPN connection to the internet, you’ll want to use the OpenVPN protocol.

Here’s a website claiming which are the top 5 VPNs: http://top5-vpn.com/hp-id-2/?gclid=CjwKCAiAtorUBRBnEiwAfcp_Yzhx0VZrS3fABj3i8hYXMzgf_q6SHw9-WNUm_BEtsx1Zh239O0M9EBoC_IoQAvD_BwE

Personally, i’ve only used Hotspot Shield and TunnelBear (which isn’t on the above link) for entertaining purposes, both work smoothly and haven’t given me any problems, on the contrary, they’ve helped me play videogames and watch movies that aren’t on my country’s netflix .

 

References:

http://www.techradar.com/news/vpn-tunnels-explained-how-to-keep-your-internet-data-secure

https://www.hotspotshield.com/?

 

 

utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=250976891038&utm_campaign=HSS-Brand-MX-

 

Spanish-Exact&utm_keyword=hotspot%20shield

https://www.tunnelbear.com/

Gilberto Rogel García A01630171

Phishing TC2027

What’s Phishing?

Phishing is the attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and money), often for malicious reasons, by disguising as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communcation.

Phishing can be done through:

• E-mail
• Phone call
• MSM
• Fake websites
• etc..

How to spot phishing?

• Poor spelling, typos and overall bad presentation.
• Threats and urgent deadlines.
• Wrong url, phone number or email.
• Impersonal introduction.
• Companies usually don’t ask for pin numbers, tokens, passwords or other kinds of personal data.

In conclusion, every time you get asked personal info by a website check if that website is 100% legit. It’s mostly common sense, don’t just give your information away, maybe a site looks legit but if it asks for important information such as a password or credit card number it looks kind of suspicious so TLDR (too long didn’t read): don’t give away your personal info without verifying the legitimacy of a website or else you will most probably regret it.

References:

Dredge, Stuart. (fri Jun 6, 2014). How to protect yourself from phishing. The Guardian, website: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/06/how-to-protect-yourself-from-phishing-attacks
N.A. (N.D.). Phishing. Wikipedia, website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

Gilberto Rogel García A01630171

 

Bitcoin TC2027

¿What is Bitcoin?

It’s a cryptocurrency and worldwide payment System, also the first decentralized digital currency, as the system works without a central bank or single administrator.

Peer-to-peer transactions which take place between users directly, without an intermediary.

It was invented by an unknow person or group of people under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto.

Released as an open-source software in 2009.

Video explaining how does bitcoin work:

TLDW (Too long didn’t watch): Transactions between users are verified by network nodes through the use of cryptography and recorded in a public distributed ledger called a blockchain.

I highly recommend watching the previous video to understand how bitcoin really works because the TLDW is very summarized and some of the words might be unknown for a first timer in this topic.

Careful! Bitcoin is NOT anonymous:

• All Bitcoin transactions are public, traceable, and permanently stored in the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin addresses are the only information used to define where bitcoins are allocated and where they are sent.
• Because the Bitcoin network is a peer-to-peer network, it is possible to listen for transactions’ relays and log their IP addresses.
• To protect your privacy, you should use a new Bitcoin address each time you receive a new payment. Doing so allows you to isolate each of your transactions in such a way that is not possible to associate them all together.

Bitcoin price is VOLATILE

• Bitcoin should be seen like a high risk asset, and you should never store money that you cannot afford to lose with Bitcoin. If you receive payments with Bitcoin, many service providers can convert them to your local currency.

I personally would not invest in Bitcoin for two reasons:

1. As mentioned above its price changes alot so it is  unpredictable if you are actually going to make any gains. A couple of weeks ago its price was around 11k and 12k and by the time i posted this it was 8.7k so yeah, its price makes it risky to invest on it and..
2. I don’t even have the money to invest in Bitcoin.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

https://bitcoin.org/en/you-need-to-know

Website to check out price of Bitcoin in real time… https://bitcointicker.co/

Gilberto Rogel García A01630171 #TC2027