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

Free Software Protects from Viruses, Tracking, and Theft 

Dallas, TX -­‐ October 8, 2012 – Today, from the COMPTEL PLUS Convention in Dallas,  Virtual World Computing announced its latest free privacy plugin, Cocoon for Google Chrome. The company launched Cocoon for Firefox last year, praised by CNET as “…a serious contender for one of the best add-­‐ons of the year.” Earlier this year, Cocoon added Internet Explorer and iOS products. Cocoon for Chrome launched in beta today and will be available to the general public on November 12, 2012.

Cocoon is a free all-­‐in-­‐one plugin that protects people from being tracked and profiled when on the Internet, even on public Wi-­‐Fi networks. Cocoon works by securely connecting over any network to Cocoon’s servers, providing enterprise-­‐grade virus protection, and encrypting all online interactions.

“Today’s digital lifestyle has us connected to the Internet from a variety of devices and locations,” said Vernon Irvin, President/CEO of Virtual World Computing. “Cocoon was developed to help manage your digital lifestyle while protecting your personal data. We are pleased to be able to offer Google Chrome users a free tool that instantly provides greater online privacy, security, and the convenience Chrome users are accustomed to, even when switching between a variety of devices.”

How Cocoon works: Available as both a free and premium service, Cocoon prevents a user’s computer from directly touching the Internet. Their privacy is protected because websites and advertisers only see Cocoon servers, hiding the user’s unique IP address and preventing their online activity from being tracked by cookies. Unlike traditional anti-­‐virus software, Cocoon prevents malicious software and virus downloads by automatically scanning files for viruses before they reach the computer. The Cocoon premium service also provides password management and unlimited personal email boxes.  

For more information or to download Cocoon for Internet Explorer, Firefox, or iOS, please visit www.GetCocoon.com or booth #627 at the COMPTEL PLUS Convention.

Society has an obligation to protect our children and online safety for children should be a priority. We need a three-pronged approach to address this issue: policy changes; industry self-regulation; and more parental tools, monitoring and education. –Vernon Irvin, President and COO, Virtual World Computing | Huffington Post

Commonsensemedia.org

February 7, 2012 is “call to action day” to protect our children’s online privacy.  Our kids should have a fundamental right to online privacy, they should not be targeted by behavioral marketing and the standard should be opt-in.

 Society has an obligation to protect our children and online safety for children should be a priority. We need a three-pronged approach to address this issue: policy changes; industry self-regulation; and more parental tools, monitoring and education. –Vernon Irvin | President & COO of Virtual World Computing

Take Action on February 7, 2012 
Join Common Sense Media today as they advocate for kids rights to online privacy in a digital world. They will be hosting a non-profit chat about kid’s issues in the presidential election on Twitter today at 11:00 am PST #kidsprez. For more information about this issue, read “Protecting Our Kids’ Privacy in a Digital World.”

Most kids today live their lives online, immersed in a mobile and digital landscape. This brave new world has revolutionized childhood. Kids and teens now create and consume enormous amounts of online and mobile content. Their access to people and information presents both possibilities and problems. While the Internet is a platform for innovation and economic growth and brings rich resources for entertainment and learning, the very nature of digital interaction creates deep concerns about kids’ privacy. –Common Sense Media

For more information about how you can help to protect kids digital privacy be sure to visit Common Sense Media today!

by Brian J. Fox, Co-founder & CTO, Cocoon

I remember clearly the first time I overheard someone say the word “e-mail” in a restaurant. I jumped up from my chair, and strode over to the table where the 30-something man was sitting, and said, “Hi, I’m bfox. We’ve met before, right?” At that time (1981), there were only about 500 e-mail servers on the ARPANet, and the odds were extremely high that one user of the network would have exchanged information with another.

Times have changed, and I’m fully aware that I don’t know everyone who uses e-mail. But I do know that I can communicate, collaborate, and exchange ideas with large numbers of people that I’ve never met physically. For me, it is the natural way that the world should be for us humans — using technology to bring us closer together.

In many ways, the Internet has finally evolved to a place where it is having just the type of transformational affect that we early e-mailers dreamed it might. The “Twitter Revolution” in Iran, the clean democratic elections in Egypt following their revolution that ousted Mubarak, the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya, Occupy Wall Street, and even the 6 million people who took to the streets earlier this month in Syria — all were aided by the technological advances that have decentralized the flow of information. Who would have dreamed a hashtag would transform journalism, empowering individuals to report the news in real time?

In Iran, officials spent as much time online shutting down portals as they did in the streets policing protesters. Libya was forced to turn off its Internet access in order to stem the flow of truth and ideas.

And now, just as the world is reshaping itself through the availability of information and flexible communication, there are direct attacks on the technology infrastructure that is shaking up political structures. The poorly named Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has serious implications for the use of free speech on the Internet, and there has been a viral revolt against companies and interests that support it. GoDaddy.com got slapped hard with an overnight boycott of its web hosting services when it declared its support of the bill, and reacted by recanting its statement of support.

It is the under the radar attacks that have the potential to wreak the most havoc on the fulfillment of the real promise of our Internet. In my current work, my job is to protect the online privacy of consumers. Advertisers are working hard to develop intricate consumer profiles of every individual — to know who you are, where you are and what you are browsing and buying. My job is to give us back the power to control our information — its flow, who it is shared with, and whether it can be used to track you.

Proponents of free speech utilize our product “Cocoon” to access social media from behind restrictive firewalls, and let their voices be heard.

For decades I imagined that we would be using secure voting systems and implementing a true digital democracy, empowering individuals around the world to shape their own governments to best reflect their needs. We still aren’t there yet. Instead, I am focused on protecting the privacy rights of those same individuals from Peeping Tom advertisers or government intrusion.

These same principles of tracking and consumer profiling are also having a limiting effect on what information is presented to us. In a recent TED speech, Eli Pariser received a standing ovation from the audience for his discussion about how hyper-personalization was directly shaping the information an individual received. Tracking is not limited to just advertisers. Sites such as Google and Facebook use it to modify and “personalize” the information you receive.

Pariser noted a mini experiment where he asked two friends to search the same word on Google from their respective computers. The information that was returned was relevant to the search term, but was vastly skewed in different directions. What came back could not have been more disparate. A couple of months ago, we had independently done a similar experiment with a handful of people around the country and were equally shocked by the results. Not only did different information come up based on geography, but the results were tailored to age, gender and even category (news, images, etc.).

Advertisers suggest they want to provide more “butlered” service, presenting you with products more suited to your tastes while Google wants to make it easier for you to find the services or information you are looking for.

It is this nexus of online tracking, behavioral profiling and hyper-personalization that truly threatens the future and possibility of the Internet. While it may be more convenient in some ways, the fact that our choices and information are being limited by algorithms and computer profiling means we are presented with fewer options. Pariser argues that hyper-personalization is limiting our viewpoint, our lens, to the world and that a marketplace of ideas and viewpoints is an essential component to democracy. If liberals are not exposed to conservative ideas and conservatives aren’t exposed to liberal ideas, how will they ever find common ground? Just because I lean to the left politically hardly means that I don’t want to hear conservative ideas or news stories.

As a citizen and as a programmer, the most frustrating thing to me is the fact that we don’t even know the profiling is occurring or that our information is being reshaped based on some hidden algorithm. While our company provides a free plug-in (and soon an iOS app) to free people of online tracking, it would be just as simple for Google and Facebook to create a button that turns off the “personalization” algorithm.

The best way to protect and even promote democracy is to protect the freedom of the Internet. While SOPA has created quite a stir publicly, we must also be vigilant about even some of the “conveniences” we are presented with, lest we all break the law of unintended consequences.

This article was first published by the Huffington Post.

Whether it is identity theft, online tracking, or profiling, the Internet can be an open door to a child’s personal information. A Wall Street Journal investigation into online privacy last year found that popular children’s websites install more tracking technologies on personal computers than do the top websites aimed at adults.

According to recent research by Consumer Reports,one million children were harassed, threatened, or subjected to other forms of cyberbullying on Facebook in the past year — and that’s just one social media site. Furthermore, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says 8 percent of the ID theft complaints in 2010 involved children.

Society has an obligation to protect our children and online safety for children should be a priority. We need a three-pronged approach to address this issue: policy changes; industry self-regulation; and more parental tools, monitoring and education.

Current legislation being considered includes proposed amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by the FTC.  COPPA has not been seriously updated since 1998 — only four years after the first browser was introduced to the marketplace. (That was back when you still needed an antenna on your car for your “car phone” to work.) In May, the Do Not Track Kidsbill (H.R. 1895) was introduced by Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas); it proposes barring websites outright from using kids’ data to target ads to them until they are 17.  Debates continue about the appropriate age cut-off and exactly how this legislation would be enforced.

A recent New York Times editorial, “A Push for Online Privacy,” stated that “Despite bipartisan concern about potential abuses, Congress has not acted to protect consumer privacy, and there is little chance legislation will pass anytime soon.”

Okay, well if we cannot count on policies to protect our children online anytime soon, how about self-regulation?

The desire to know who, what and where people are at any given point is driven by advertising revenue. The more companies know about a consumer, the more they can target advertising to their buying habits. Until their revenue model changes, what incentive do these companies have to self-regulate? Unless, of course, there is legislation in place, and you see the circular argument.

So it is up to the parents, and as a parent, I can say we are falling short.  The same Consumer Reports research found that 7.5 million American children under the age of 13 were using Facebook, more than 5 million were 10 and under, and their accounts were largely unsupervised by their parents (although Facebook’s policy is not to allow children under 13 to use its site).

So we can wait for politicians to step up to build a regulatory framework to protect our children’s online privacy and hope that the online industry will check its own greed, or we can take control of protecting our kids today by monitoring our their online use, educating them about online safety, and using the tools available to protect them from being tracked.

Follow Vernon Irvin, President & CEO of Virtual World Computing on Twitter: www.twitter.com/GetCocoon

Privacy has become a red-hot issue in 2011. As more privacy organizations, advocates and researchers discover and disclose to the general public what social networks, governments, corporations, data miners/aggregators, advertisers and law enforcement collect;  public awareness of the impact of our digital footprints and  invasive online tracking tactics become exposed.

Social networking giant, Facebook has been highly controversial in the realm of data-collection practices and is a master of stealth digital surveillance:

“Facebook has perfected a stealth digital surveillance apparatus that tracks, analyzes and then acts on your information, including what you tell your friends,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “Facebook users should be cautious about whether the social networking giant ultimately has their best interests at heart.”   –Los Angeles Times

With the rise of online hactivism, hacker groups such as Lulzsec’s 50-day rampage against corporations, law enforcement and security companies affected individual lives when they targeted the CIA and dumped a list of 62,000+ email addresses and passwords.

Many of you may remember Firesheep (October 2010), the Firefox plug-in that let hackers eavesdrop and steal unencrypted cookies from anyone who used unsafe Wi-Fi connections (such as airport and coffee houses). Firesheep would let non-technical people become “hackers” giving them access to the log-in credentials of the victim with a simple double click in the Firesheep sidebar. It would then hijack the web session by copying session cookies and use these cookies to impersonate the victim. Last month Sophos reported that security researchers created their own version of the notorious Firesheep plug-in that had the ability to expose data leakage in Google search history.

The ten biggest threats to privacy in 2011 paint a picture of a landscape that is littered with the potential for warrantless tracking, pervasive monitoring, mobile stalking, behavioral advertising and data harvesting. The repercussions of sharing too much personal information on Social networks has led to a deluge of private data flooding the public domain; where sites such as Facebook consistently alter privacy settings to share more. The latest Facebook platform change to create a deeper sense of connection is secondary – Bottom line:  advertising is primary and Facebook gets its income from ads.

“Data is the new oil…everybody benefits from your data except you, the end user. It’s as if everyone’s genes were harvested by a small number of companies without any payment to those whose genes they are.” –Michael Fertik, chief executive of Reputation.com

Top 10 Internet Privacy Threats: 

10-GEO Tags: When photos or videos are taken with a GPS-equipped device (digital camera, laptop, smartphone) they are embedded with a geotag that reveals the exact location in longitude and latitude of where it was taken. The exposure of geo-locational data on social networking sites could enable the risk of social surveillance and stalking.

9- Google Wi-Fi Sniffing: According to news sources, Skyhook Wireless has been wardriving a fleet of trucks through towns and cities in the U.S., Canada, (covering 70 percent of population centers) and metropolitan centers in Europe and Asia and  mapping every wireless router, both public and private. Skyhook identified each router by its MAC address and correlated it with the exact location of each router, using GPS. The router information currently exists in a database of 250 million Wi-Fi access points. That’s pretty scary because most people have no idea that this has happened.

8-Facial Recognition Technology: Initial use of this technology was used by law enforcement, security and surveillance but is now in the public realm with apps like SocialCamera and SceneTap.

Facebook deployed Facial-recognition software this summer, allowing people to opt out of tagging but did not stop Facebook from gathering data or having the ability to recognize your face. Eventually this technology is meant to search for people by simply using a picture.

With facial recognition software that can discern users’ true identities–not just the personae they choose to create online–Facebook becomes a much more powerful identification tool. –Rebecca Greenfield, Atlantic Wire

7-Internet Censorship:  Some countries that have extremely strong censorship policies are: China, Iran and Myanmar. China has has an advanced filtering system (the Great Firewall of China) and can restrict access in real time. Over 10 million web pages are blocked in Iran and web sites that offer tools and techniques for circumventing filters are also heavily filtered. The Myanmar government allegedly monitors Internet cafes with computers that take screenshots every few minutes.

6-Smartphones: The government’s ability to track individuals using Smartphone’s and mobile malware top the list. Researchers at Trusteer recently discovered a new attack by the SpyEye Trojan that targets online banking security systems.

The malware compromises the login information to the victim’s bank account and injects a phony page into the smartphone browser. The malware then instructs the victim to type the original confirmation code into the fake web page form. The hacker is able to capture the code (man in the browser injection) and login to the victim’s bank account. Once the hacker is in, they change the telephone number associated with the account and divert the funds.

5-Data-Stealing: Rogue applications on social networking sites, computers that harbor botnets (Coreflood) and smartphone malware (DroidDream) are just a few of the nasties that are out there.

4-Behavioral advertising: HTTP cookies, flash cookies, sites that respawn HTTP cookies with Flash (KISSmetrics), and HTML5 Local storage (more flexible than standard HTTP cookies) are just a few of the methods that are used for tracking online users.

During the course of a typical day – if you use your computer, your smartphone, your TV and shop at your local stores using a loyalty card – targeted advertising will trail behind you. When you sit down to watch TV, your TV is watching you. Visiting Facebook, searching on Google or Bing also adds to the fleshing out of your behavioral profile that consists of your searches, online habits, preferences and buying patterns.

3-Hackers: – Organized cybercriminals, hacktivists, Anonymous and Lulzsec are a few of the online entities that participate in DDoS attacks, data breaches, phishing, online banking fraud, online shopping fraud and a host of other unsavory activities. Weak security systems are generally the culprit.

2-Social networks: Social networks allow users to build connections and store information remotely. It is also the weakest data link. When people become dependent on social networking default privacy settings (Facebook’s frictionless sharing) and post too much personal information online, it becomes ripe for picking. Identity thieves, scammers, hackers, debt collectors, corporations, marketers, data miners and governments use social networks to gather information. Your data is the harvest.

1-You!  – The weakest link in the privacy chain could be YOU! Everything that you do online leaves a digital footprint from search engine tastes to browsing patterns and social interactions. Things that you share online could go further than your social circle. Always think before you post!

When using a service or product from a company that deals with Internet security and privacy it is important that the resource be credible, competent and trustworthy. Terms of Service (TOS) and the site Privacy Policy should be easy to read and transparent. There should be no guess work in a privacy policy and that is why we take great pride in providing a very short and succinct Privacy Policy.

The core business model of Virtual World Computing (VWC) is built on ensuring the highest levels of privacy and security and protection. The company’s flagship product -  Cocoon   provides consumers with a better way to browse with greater privacy protection, computer security and browsing convenience. Cocoon puts the user in control of the Internet experience by ensuring that their computer and personal information are protected from malicious attacks, unwanted spam or phishing, cookie tracking and many other invasions of privacy. [Source]

The people behind Cocoon

Jeff Bermant, Founder & CEO: Jeff had the simple yet powerful idea of protecting his privacy and his computer by accessing the Internet through a browser running on a remote PC. The seed of that idea grew into Virtual World Computing and the Cocoon™ service. Jeff is an entrepreneur by nature.

Brian J. Fox, Founder & CTO: Brian was employee #1 of the Free Software Foundation GNU, and wrote the BASH shell that runs on virtually every Mac and Linux machine out there.

Marvin Minsky, Advisory Board: Professor of Media Arts and Sciences and Professor of EECS, MIT. A pioneer of artificial intelligence (AI) and one of the most important cognitive scientists of the century. Marvin pioneered advances in mathematics, computational linguistics, optics, robotics and telepresence. He built SNARC, (Stochastic Neural Analog Reinforcement Calculator), the first neural network simulator, and founded MIT’s AI Lab.

We believe the key problem with both security and privacy online is the accessibility current browsers allow to your computer. Wether it’s cookies or executable code you should have control over what has access to your hard drive. The traditional anti-virus solution of dealing with viruses after after they’ve reached your computer is wrong. We want to stop them from ever getting at your data. So, the core concept behind Cocoon is to keep the Net at arms distance from your hard drive and your computer.

Our business is to protect your privacy and security – if we don’t do that we don’t have a business – so we take Internet security and privacy seriously.

Yesterday was a very busy day for Cocoon! Our service was announced as free over at the download blog on CNET and received a great review. Seth Rosenblatt from CNET wrote : “There aren’t many security-focused browser add-ons that funnel the entire Internet through a proxy before allowing it to reach you”

Traffic was pretty heavy on the Cocoon servers and our development and support teams were hard at work throughout the day. Blake and T.J. were monitoring and responding to all of your support requests and glued to their monitors!

We were also featured at Sys-Con Media and we like the way Sys-Con explained Cocoon services!

…the software is easily installed and runs in Firefox 3.6 or later, instantly ensuring that every web session doesn’t expose users to unwanted threats from the far reaches of the Internet. When signed in, every user’s web session links to a secure server where all Internet activities take place. Personal data and browsing history is encrypted, keeping it completely private and the user controls if the data is stored, or not. Cocoon acts as a virtual firewall to prevent the Internet from directly touching your machine. This added layer of security helps to eliminate worry by:

• Protecting personal information and activity by preventing cookie tracking,including Facebook cookie blocking.
• Giving consumers the option to make choices themselves, defaulting to opt-in, not opt-out.
• Limiting hacks, preventing malware and proxy browsing to secure digital borders and limit PC vulnerabilities.
• Creating ad hoc email addresses when you need them to keep your email private and prevent both spam and phishing scams.
• Empowering greater exploration on the Internet with no data stored on your computer and the option to remotely store history and bookmarks, and the ability to access it from any computer.
• Ensuring that the consumer’s right to privacy is never abridged by encrypting and securely storing data and striping identity information. [Source]

David Washburn, VP of Cocoon Marketing: “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.” 

Coocoon has come a long way and we want to thank all of you for helping to spread the word. Cocoon also prevents automatic drive-by-downloads, prevents you from being tricked into manually downloading malware and protects against web-based attacks because it blocks malware before it makes it to your computer.  You still see the whole Web with crystal clarity, but you aren’t connected directly to it. Malware can’t get to your computer, ever. And that’s the way we like it!

Brought to you via the Friendly Cocoon Team!

Please stop by and visit us on Twitter and Facebook!

Yesterday was a whirlwind day for Cocoon. Our plug-in was announced as a free service at CNET and sys-con.com also released an article about Cocoon Internet FREE services.  We have been busy! David, from the Cocoon team recently commented over at CNET:

The security environment on the Internet today begs for relief. We’ve offered our service to provide an actual solution that prevents viruses, protects your privacy, enhances your personal security and shields your personal identity. We felt the moral obligation to ensure the everyone has access to the most advanced and secure technology solution, that helps give you peace of mind from the threats on the Internet today.

Internet threats are huge today. Every time you turn your head it appears that somebody is getting hacked or compromised in some way. Cocoon is offering an added layer of security and privacy to your Internet browsing experience in the form of a Firefox plug-in.

Cocoon acts as a virtual firewall to prevent the Internet from directly touching your machine. This added layer of security helps to eliminate worry by:

• Protecting personal information and activity by preventing cookie tracking,including Facebook cookie blocking.
• Giving consumers the option to make choices themselves, defaulting to opt-in, not opt-out.
• Limiting hacks, preventing malware and proxy browsing to secure digital borders and limit PC vulnerabilities.
• Creating ad hoc email addresses when you need them to keep your email private and prevent both spam and phishing scams.
• Empowering greater exploration on the Internet with no data stored on your computer and the option to remotely store history and bookmarks, and the ability to access it from any computer.
• Ensuring that the consumer’s right to privacy is never abridged by encrypting and securely storing data and striping identity information. [Source]

Check us out at www.GetCocoon.com
and if you have questions you can email us at support@GetCocoon.com.

Brought to you via the Friendly Cocoon Team!

Please stop by and visit us on Twitter and Facebook!

Check out our new (free!) web-service that’s 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.

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”

Check it out at www.GetCocoon.com
and if you have questions you can email us at support@GetCocoon.com.

Get Cocoon and pass it on to your friends and family. You can do this by clicking on Cocoon in the the toolbar and this will bring you to the Cocoon homepage.

Next, you click on tell friends and Cocoon will send you an email that you can forward to your friends.

Thanks! – The Cocoon Team!