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

Our free web-service is doing some very cool stuff…

You can now be totally safe on open WiFi networks, you will no longer be tracked by every website you go to, AND you don’t have to worry about getting viruses online no matter where you browse.

And you get unlimited email addresses for anything you have to sign up for. That means that you can put an end to spam just by throwing away your inbox.

It’s gotten some great reviews: 

Lifehacker: “Cocoon wraps up all those privacy features into one simple add-on”

CNET: “Cocoon looks like a serious contender for one of the best add-ons of the year”

–The Cocoon Team

The idea behind using Third-party link-shortening services is to make sharing long links shorter and easier.  Short links can take you to both good sites and bad sites and are often used in social networking to trick you into visiting a malicious site.

For example: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/12/tagging_people.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter becomes http://t.co/hU3zPZnZ when using a link-shortening service.

Kevin Haley, Director, Symantec Security Technology and Response revealed in Symantec’s 2011 Internet Security Threat Report that:

Shortened URLS are great for staying within the character restrictions of a social networking post.  But, they also allow a bad guy to hide the URL of a malicious web site.  This trick is working and bad guys are rushing to use it.  65% of the malicious URLs posted on social networks were shortened URLs.

bit.ly,goo.gl, is.gd, ow.ly,  Su.pr and Tinyurl,are a few of the third-party shortening services that cybercriminals utilize to direct unsuspecting users to infected websites. The bad guys are very aware that you don’t know where you are going once you click on a shortened links and this is obviously to their advantage.

 You can one-up the bad guys by using a site such as Unmask  Parasites.  A quick copy and paste of the shortened link into the check box at their site will reveal where the link will take you and also let you know if the site is suspicious. Though Unmask Parasites is still in beta, it is a very good tool to add to your Internet safety kit.

Airports, restaurants, coffee shops, businesses, dentists, libraries and even public parks offer public access to Wi-Fi for free. Surfing unsecured hotspots can open your data pipeline to some very unsavory characters.  Whether you use it for convenience or because there is no other Internet connection available — the bad guys still have all kinds of tools to gather and steal information from you.

In a recent Cyber-scary contest that we featured in mid November one of our entrants realized that the hotel that they stayed at in Las Vegas did not even have a public Wi-Fi connection available! But her husband was able to easily connect to a rogue Wi-Fi hotspot to enter his credit card information:

“Haven’t been on vacation in 20 years…… We get to our hotel in Vegas. First thing my husband does is, to try to go online, to check his work email. He gets a wireless signal called Luxorhotel_guest. Clicks on it, and enters in our credit card information. We then find out that the LUXOR only offers wired internet service! GREAT!”

At Virtual World Computing, we offer free cloud-based “Cocoon” security software that automatically encrypts unsecured Wi-Fi communications. While logged into Cocoon, all your online activities beccome routed through our “secure tunnel” to a safe server that blocks the bad guys from getting to your data. You won’t have to spend your time worrying about online banking or stolen credit card information, because we keep the bad guys away.

Cocoon Features:

• Creates a virtual firewall that keeps the bad guys away from your computer.
• Provides antivirus protection; Cocoon will alert you and stop harmful or malicious files from downloading to your computer.
• Protects your personal information and activity by preventing cookie tracking.
• Prevents malware and drive-by downloads.
• Gives you the option to remotely store history and bookmarks in the cloud.
• Encrypts all your data.
• Shields your personal identity and protects your privacy.
• Provides ad hoc email addresses via mailslots that stops spam in its tracks