SlickVPN and Apple iOS9
Today’s the day that Apple releases iOS 9 for iPhones and iPad updates. Besides a ‘smarter’ Siri, better multi-tasking capability, and a smaller download size, the big noise has been all about privacy. Earlier this month at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Tim Cook stressed Apple’s dedication to protecting customer privacy. There’s also a post on the Apple site direct from Mr. Cook himself.
Apple promises not to build a profile based on your email content, web browsing, or sell any information stored on your iPhone or in iCloud. They stress that they do not, have never, and will not work with any government agency from any country to create any sort of backdoor to any Apple product or service.
Reassuring, however this renewed vigor towards privacy issues is partly in response to what had become a real problem: spying by app developers. Appthority, a company that advises companies on security issues, surveyed 400 of the most popular mobile apps for both Apple and Android devices. The vast majority of them collected a variety of personal datafrom users—location details, address book contacts, calendar information, and more. The more is potentially the most disturbing part– collection of the IMEI and UDID numbers embedded in the mobile phone. These are unique device identifiers, and are a near-surefire way to match to a unique user.
And that wasn’t all of it. App developers were allowed to set up scanning of your iOS device within their own apps. This was theoretically allowed to enable apps to work better with each other, but created a way for companies like Facebook and Twitter to collect the information and better target ads to the consumer—even though this does not seem to have been Apple’s intention. At the end of the day, apps were spying on other apps—meaning ultimately on the user of that app.
iOS 9 is supposed to prevent this scanning with iOS 9. But one has to wonder what other holes might need a patch job in the future—and what personal data will be lost in the meantime.
You can rely on others to look out for your privacy, or you can seize control yourself. And total control of your privacy is really only available with a Virtual Private Network, or VPN. Private and public networks alike can be secured with a VPN, which corporations have been doing for years to protect their own sensitive data. VPNs create a private network across a public network—in other words, the internet. The VPN encrypts your online communications, and is probably the smartest privacy move you can make for your mobile device.
iPhones and Android devices all have excellent support for VPN. From a technical standpoint PPTP, and L2TP/IPSec, protocols work. Setting up your choice of VPN is very easy. And once set up, it’s easier than ever to remain connected to your VPN– iPhones used to automatically disconnect from VPNs when going in sleep mode, but this has been fixed ever since iOS 8.
And since you can choose which VPN you are going to use, why not choose the best?
SlickVPN will secure your communications over your mobile device and protect your online identity. No one can monitor or affect what you do online. The strong encrypted tunnel produced by SlickVPN means the addresses or URLs of any site you visit are masked, as well as any unique identifiers for you.
And this protection starts at just $5.00 per month, or just $28.99 for a year with special pricing available now. 24/7 support, blazing fast connections, and a 30 day money back guarantee.
Control your own internet experience wherever you are—at home, or on your mobile device.