VPN, malvertising blocking service now available for iOS, Android, Mac OS X, and Windows.
Disconnect, the public benefit corporation behind the eponymous online privacy tool and “malvertising” blocking service, released a new version of its virtual private networking and privacy protection service for iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac OS X this morning. Disconnect has offered versions of its service on these platforms in the past, but the latest edition is the first to bring an enhanced version of what the company first introduced on the privacy-oriented Blackphone to these other operating systems.
The new Disconnect app and service comes in free and premium versions. The free application simply provides the user with a visualized record of tracking performed by websites and mobile applications, showing what tracking cookies are used and whose cookies they are. It also shows any unsecured connections within sites using otherwise secure HTTPS connections.The service is available through Apple’s App Store and the company’s website (not the Google Play or Windows stores), and it adds filtering of cell provider “supercookies”and other common tracking data captured by websites and mobile applications. Disconnect has also inked a deal with Deutsche Telekom to offer its software and services as a promotional bundle to DT customers.
The premium service costs $5 per month or $50 per year, and it provides an OpenVPN-based virtual private network connection for all Internet traffic.
As with VPN services such as Tunnelbear, Disconnect provides the ability to avoid location-based censorship of Internet content by using proxies in multiple countries. This makes it possible for the device to appear to be in another country to sites that use Internet address geolocation to control access to content or to avoid firewall-based content filtering by ISPs or nation-states. The VPN service also provides the ability to perform anonymous Web searches on Google, Bing, and other search engines, as Ars reported when testing an earlier version of the service on the Blackphone.
The Disconnect service bundles the company’s “malvertising” blocking service, which blocks third-party ad networks that use cross-site tracking cookies, such as those from Facebook and Google. That service resulted in the August release of the application for Android being pulled from the Google Play store because it interfered with Google’s ad network.
According to Disconnect CEO Casey Oppenheim, the new version includes an even more thorough filter for malvertising. Oppenheim, a consumer-rights attorney, said that “there’s no point in submitting the new application to the Play Store at this time, as [Google has] made clear their decision to put advertising profits ahead of consumer safety and choice.”
Ars is in the process of evaluating Disconnect and several other VPN platforms, and we'll publish a full review soon.
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