The Cocoon Blog
The Internet as it should be: private, secure and virus free

It’s easy to think of the assorted cyber junk that your computer can pick up as a benign but annoying problem. It might slow your computer down, or drive you crazy with pop-ups, send out spam from your system, but these seem almost like pranks, hardly more than online hijinks. I have read articles talking about the cost of these issues on a global level, referring to slowdowns in productivity and the time spent to remove them. But an article in Computer World brings the cost closer to home. As close as your local school district.

The FBI is investigating a Trojan that has been used to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from school districts and they’ve hit multiple districts across the country with the total take in the millions. The article is here: School boards hit with cash-stealing Trojan.

Hackers are preying on individual users, businesses, schools, and governments. I love the idea that Cocoon will help keep people safe from these types of attacks.

As we work on launching Cocoon, we are thinking about the imagery we might use to represent Cocoon. These kinds of stories have me thinking of Cocoon like the Lone Ranger keeping the cyber wild west at bay.

In my house we have a Mac and a PC. If I believe the Mac guy in TV ads and my Mac friends, I’d be convinced that Macs don’t get viruses.

Some experts state (here and here) that Macs are as bad as or worse than Windows PCs in terms of vulnerability to malware. “There is no magic fairy dust protecting Macs,” says Dino Dai Zovi, co-author of The Mac Hacker’s Handbook. The critics of the experts make sense when they defend the advantages of Macs in detailed comments and blog postings.

Me, I’m just confused. I want to believe that Macs are inherently safer, but I still take precautions, and I use anti-virus software on the Mac, (just as I do on the PC). Nevertheless, I keep my fingers crossed when anyone in the family goes online. I’d like to be more comfortable about Mac security and privacy online. I’d like to prevent a big Mac attack rather than clean one up after the fact.

Was it a bug in my browser, or did I get tricked into installing malicious software? Does it matter? Probably not. Will it happen again? Probably. The sad fact is we’re both flawed. Both of us can be exploited by bad guys on the net. The scary part — the vast majority of malicious exploits don’t exploit buggy browsers, but unwitting end-users, (fascinating article in PC World). It’s called “social engineering,” which makes it sound benign if not downright benevolent. After all, it’s “social,” which is a good thing, right? And it’s “engineering,” which is good, right? Put ’em together, and you get . . . something bad. Something deceptive and malicious. So what’s a person to do? The easy answer is always be on guard and keep your browser updated. The better answer: browse with protection against social engineering attacks, so you can never be tricked into downloading malicious code. And the good news, it’s on its way.

Even without wearing my tinfoil hat and ducking the black helicopters, online privacy does matter to me. As someone who lives with a roommate and shares office space, do I really want just anyone who walks up to my computer to hit the back button and see where I’ve just been?

It’s most likely innocent, but do I want a co-worker to know I’m considering a new job? Or a roommate to know I might think about moving from Maine? (After all I think this every winter – why get her nervous this year?)

It’s not that I’m trying to “hide something,” but shouldn’t I decide what to share? What I search for, look at, and think about is my business.

Sure, I could clear history after the fact, or turn on private browsing up front, but then I lose my record of places I’ve been and might want to return to. I want the best of both worlds. Privacy with rich history. Seems reasonable doesn’t it?

CocoonApp will go live before the end of October! It will be a limited availability launch as we ramp up.  If you want to get on the list, stay tuned for our invitation site link to be posted here.

Meanwhile, ongoing testing of the rapid development is going great. Sure we’re learning and changing things, but that’s the point. Usability is improving daily, and feedback shows people want to browse with privacy effortlessly, while avoiding spyware, malware, and viruses. What’s fun is to see people recognize how complacent we’ve all been with the status quo. They now expect browsing should be private and virus-free. Imagine that . . . coming by the end of October.

In two hours I’ll find out when CocoonApp launches its limited beta trials. It’s hard to imagine and impossible to explain how much needs to get done for this to happen.

What is CocoonApp? Imagine an application that would let you browse the web with nothing touching your hard drive. No malware or spyware to ever bog down your machine again, privacy from websites that want to spam you, or anyone you share your computer with. Why? Because with CocoonApp, you’re not browsing the net on your computer, you’re doing it on our servers. We just show it to you on your computer. You interact with the web the same way, but with the peace of mind of knowing you are protected. Hence one of the tag lines we’ve considered: “Peace of mind and the internet together at last”. Well, when we go live it will be “at last”… I’ll let you know.