Replies

Thanks. That was helpful.

Is there a counter showing how much bandwidth you have consumed in a month?

Yes, but it’s on their website. You log in to your account and it tells you your byte count for the current day, the month, and YTD. It gives you numbers and graphs. Unfortunately if you’ve reached your 10GB limit for the month, from what I’ve read in the forums you’re cut off until the next month!

I’m still doing a free 30 day trial but I would only use TC for casual wireless so it isn’t an issue for me. For a road warrior, may not be a good solution. I don’t know if you can buy more bandwidth. I’ve installed on my laptop that has wired and wireless and the TC connection then becomes the 3rd LAN adapter.

You can always get a free 30 day trial of Comodo and check it out. The TrustConnect also has a free trial just by itself it you don’t want the firewall, but it’s only for 7 days. Caveat: for both products you have to cough up your information along with your credit card, just in case you forget to cancel the free trial.

Ah! That’s what I thought originally.

So the Comodo offering does sound like a good solution for those who use wireless (particularly at public places) who ar enot connecting directly to a work VPN nor visiting web sites that don’t run thought that VPN.

Just for clarification, because the TrustSecure documentation on their web site is really inadequate, I’ve included a snip from the help file on TC in my Comodo help file. Please note, this works for wired and wireless, they don’t make that clear.

TrustConnect Overview
——————————————————————————–
Comodo TrustConnect is a secure Internet proxy service that creates an encrypted session when users are accesssing the Internet over public wireless connections. Since these wireless sessions can be relatively easily intercepted, they present a significant data vulnerability gap for businesses and consumers alike. TrustConnect is designed to eliminate these types of data hijacks by preventing criminals from attacking or scanning your system from the local network that you are using to connect to the Internet. It also encrypts all of your traffic destined for the Internet (including Web site addresses, instant messaging conversations, personal information, plain text usernames and passwords and other important information.) After connecting to the service, the TrustConnect software will indicate that traffic is being encrypted as it leaves your system. Data thieves and hackers cannot ‘sniff’ or intercept your data – they can’t even determine where your information is coming from because, as you are connecting to the Internet through a SSL secured VPN connection to the TrustConnect servers, your requests appear to come from our IP address. Ordinarily, cyber criminals could easily intercept these broadcasts.

Setting up Comodo TrustConnect is easy, as it works on most operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X) as well as with most firewall applications. Typical setup takes less than three minutes. TrustConnect clients are available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux and iPhone mobile devices and can be downloaded by logging into your account at https://accounts.comodo.com/account/login . Your Comodo Internet Security Suite Pro confirmation email contains confirmation of your the username that you set up during intial sign up and a subscription ID for the service. Once logged in, click the TrustConnect tab to add subscriptions, change billing and contact information, and review the ongoing status of your service. Your Comodo Internet Security Suite Pro TrustConnect account has a 10 GB/month bandwidth limit.

Comodo Internet Security Pro customers also receive the $99 value ‘Total Security and Support’ LivePCSupport package. Please visit http://livepcsupport.com for full product details. Please visit http://personalfirewall.comodo.com to sign up for Comodo Internet Security Pro.

The primary downside is the 10GB limit per month.

I’ve only used VPN’s for work where the destination is the work network.

I looked at the Comodo TrustConnect info but it is not detailed enough for me.

How would you use the Comodo VPN to connect to an email ssytem that doesn’t offer a direct HTTPS connection?

After making the connection from your computer to Comodo, would you type the email site name in the browser, then Comodo would intercept and route the command to the destination?

I couldn’t see exactly, from any site description, what Comodo TrustConnect did either nor how it does it other than general marketing blather. Here’s what goes on:
1. Install TrustConnect as a separate installation. I’ve installed on three computers — one netbook w/ WinXP Home, one laptop w/WinXP home, one desktop w/WinXP Pro.
2. You can install TC on all home computers for one license fee but you may have only one active connection at a time. You’ll see why below.
3. TC creates a 2nd (or 3rd) LAN adapter (TCPIP) connection that is a “TAP-Win32 Adapter V9” with a new pseudo MAC addy. Remember, this is virtual so you don’t care what the MAC addy is.
4. TC will create a program icon that you can keep in your system tray if you want. Also it will create another network icon in the system tray, this one will be the newly created LAN adapter with the virtual MAC. Until you connect, your little network icon will be “x”ed out as though your wireless is off or your ethernet cable is unplugged. This virtual LAN adapter and MAC will be created only once so you won’t go through all this after the initial install.
5. Ready to connect: Right click on the TC icon in the system tray, then in the context menu click Connect.
6. The first time you connect you’ll create a username and password for authentication.
7. You’ll get a Comodo TrustConnect User Authentication pop-up window where you type in your username and password you’ve chosen. You can also tick the box for it to remember your name and PW. Click OK and the TAP-Win32 connection will be made to their server, probably in Texas. You’ll acquire a VPN network addy from them, usually 172.20.xx.xx.
8. From thence forward until you disconnect, *all internet access* is done through this connection via Comodo’s VPN server. Thus your true IP addy and location are located elsewhere. All surfing is then secure. I have tried this using wired and wireless. It makes no difference to the VPN. I haven’t seen any difference in speed but haven’t done the speed tests with the VPN.

To connect to an e-mail system, like Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, my Network Solutions hosted e-mail, you just use it as you normally would.

When done, you disconnect using the TC icon and your VPN connection is closed. You’ll see the little network icon “x”ed out again and Windows will tell you a network cable is unplugged.

I don’t know why Comodo is so lacking in details about this service, since separately they charge about $5 a month or $50 a year if you’re not getting a Comodo firewall license. The documentation is a little weak too, but it’s so simple to use there’s nothing to it.

Hope this helps. No, I don’t work for Comodo but I’m impressed with the VPN’s ease of use and speed.

And that was?

Wow, that’s a lot of AV programs that you’ve written off as unacceptable, so I’m curious as to what you DID decide was the “one for you.”

BTW, Welcome to Woody’s Lounge!

Thanks for the welcome. All the folks here are great! My solution isn’t for everyone — I chose the top rated firewall that also has an integrated AV — Comodo Internet Security. I used to use AVG, then F-PROT. Dropped both of them.
Here, check this out:
http://www.matousec.com/projects/firewall-…nge/results.php
One reason that made me switch from Online Armor Pro to Comodo is their included VPN software called Comodo TrustConnect. I’ve also tried various SSL and VPN solutions and this is really slick — quick install, very easy to use, doesn’t slow down internet browsing. The only downside for heavy surfers is you’re limited to 10 GB a month. I use it only for wireless when I travel with my little netbook. Also, Comodo allows you to install Internet Security on all home computers for one price — I think it’s about $40 a year but that includes the VPN. Also, Online Armor has HIPS that was slowing things down. I have a Checkpoint hardware firewall so I don’t need the HIPS, thus decided a change was for me.

I also use SiteHound (paid version) for site warnings in FF, WinPatrol (paid version), Malwarebytes Anti-malware (paid version), GMER (a freebie), HiJackThis, Flashblock and NoScript, among others, in FF. Note that all of these programs have free versions that are perfectly acceptable. I just believe in supporting the developers by purchasing licenses for multiple computers.

Yeah, I’m paranoid. Having been in the I.T. biz since 1969 and an I.T. Director for many years, I used to tell my staff the only safe PC is one that’s turned off. I guess it’s worked for me since I have never had a virus, malware, spyware, Trojan, worms etc.
Time for a new line of work I think …….

Are you a tester/writer for AV Comparatives?

Nope. I just find their testing very interesting. It seems that what is extremely accurate at the highest setting is very slow to scan and has an unacceptably high rate of false positives, which I found to be quite true, after testing all of the ones rated excellent. For me, maybe not for everyone, what’s the point of having an AV if it’s not highly accurate? Then again, it’s a trade-off between accuracy, scanning speed (not a deal breaker to me if I schedule a weekly in the wee hours) and false positives, which can be from real-time monitoring as well as the weekly or daily scans. So far the standalone AVs aren’t acceptable, especially when you check out the virtual size, the working set, and the memory use. I just gagged on all of the above. Your mileage may vary!

As I understand things, a VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a private tunnel in the internet between two nodes. You need the person on the other side to have a VPN also (and same software?).

So cutedeedle, how do you use the Comodo VPN in daily work?

I don’t use it for work. It’s handy for travel/wireless. That’s what I use it for. The VPN tunnel is between you/your account in which you sign in (after establishing the account with Comodo) and their server. It’s really clever and doesn’t slow down browsing. I’ve tried several free SSL and VPN solutions for my wireless access when out in the wild, and this is really slick. I’ve tested it with Gibson’s Shield’s Up and it always shows as the IP addy being in Texas or not even having a reverse DNS, both of which indicate you’re safe. It was just what I was searching for, having tried, among others, OpenVPN (way too complicated), Anchor Shield, Hamachi, Anonymizer and Megaproxy (I paid for this one — D’OH). One thing I needed (and this is important for many surfers) is the ability to still turn my scripts and Flash on and off with my FF addons NoScript and Flashblock. I couldn’t do that with Megaproxy and they wouldn’t help with a workaround. Thus I couldn’t log into my Network Solutions webmail, which required scripting. Bah!

BTW, if you just want the VPN without the entire Comodo suite you can subscribe to Comodo TrustConnect without the firewall/AV part.

If someone needs a VPN at work (I’m an independent I.T. consultant) I would hope the employer would provide the VPN ability. A good VPN will allow you to log in securely to the server at the workplace and also then let you go back out to the internet — securely. If it doesn’t, they haven’t set it up correctly. I know, I used to be an I.T. Director!

Windows Secrets mentioned in their today’s newsletter the product named above.

Before I install the trial or purchased version, I would like a user’s experience and opinions.

Yeah, ditto what everyone said. I’ve used it for months and purchased it for three of my four PCs including my netbook. That’s how important I think it is. I came to that conclusion from constantly perusing *all* of the geek/tech sites and the overwhelming consensus is Malwarebytes, GMER (another freebie), and if you suspect something nasty has infected you, run HiJackThis (freebie too) and submit the log to any number of forums for interpretation. We geeks are really happy to help get rid of those nasties from your computer. And always check the following for unbiased tests:
Software firewalls —
http://www.matousec.com/projects/firewall-…nge/results.php
AV:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparative…iews/main-tests

Warning: I just tested several of the top rated AV programs on AV-Comparatives and wasn’t really happy with any of them for various reasons. Too slow to do weekly scans, too many false positives, used way too many Windows resources (and I have a huge server-class PC). I went with a top-rated integrated software firewall, Comodo Internet Security. It may not be for everyone but I’m super paranoid. I would also recommend a “safe surfing” solution for your browser but not the Comodo SafeSurf that is included with their SW. I found it to be useless. Also do not go with McAfee’s site browser add-on. There’s a great article in Windows Secrets newsletter about how McAfee doesn’t keep their ratings updated, neither the safe nor unsafe ones. So what’s the point?!

Hope this helps. I have been in the I.T. biz since 1969 and I perform due diligence when searching for security solutions. But remember, the only safe computer is one that’s turned OFF.

Hello Al. How ironic that after reading your reply I checked with a recent free download of McAfee that monitors web sites before one logs on to them to verify if they are safe and lo & behold they regard TinyURL as A1 OK so what is a novice like me to believe?

Don’t bother with the McAfee monitor. It’s useless. They don’t keep their info up to date, both positive and negative:
http://www.windowssecrets.com/2009/02/19/0…etesting-policy

I use SiteHound — I pay for one copy and use the freebie version on three other computers:
http://www.firetrust.com/en/products/sitehound
I have never experienced any surfing slowdowns with SiteHound and with the paid version you get automagic updates.

Or maybe try this, which was recommended in the Windows Secrets newsletter (with a few caveats):
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10777

Avira has one of the highest false-detection rates of the major AV programs, although it’s considered a very robust AV. I just tested all the top rated ones, including Avira, and they all have a high number false detections, they scan pretty slowly, they use up a lot of Windows resources, but the high rated ones are extremely accurate, unlike the “popular” ones such as AVG. So I guess you either choose accuracy or speed and a small footprint. Here’s the testing web site:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/

The testing results report indicates you should always set the heuristics to “high” for the most accurate results, which is how the tests were conducted. Personally I found all of these programs unacceptable for various reasons so I chose my own path to follow!

I’ll add my .5 cents’ worth. Get a free SSL or VPN software app to protect yourself any time you’re hanging out there wireless. There are many out there, you can Google for some, but here are a few I’ve read about that seem to be commonly used by the tech community:
HotSpot Shield
Hamachi
OpenVPN
A good place to check is VPNlabs.org for ideas.

I just signed up for the Comodo Internet Security suite (paid for version) and it includes a really cool VPN called Comodo TrustConnect. Takes about one minute to install. Easy to use. One caveat is you’re limited to 10GB a month of internet data. If you’re traveling and doing this on an irregular basis or for casual use, 10GB should be fine. If not, then you can find a decent paid-for secure app that won’t cost too much. Hope this helps.