Anonymous Browsing With SecurityKISS

SecurityKISS Tunnel is a VPN (Virtual Private Network) anonymous browsing service – it protects privacy, ensures anonymity and bypasses geographic restrictions on the internet. Like other anonymous browsing providers, it is of most use to two types of people:

1. People who want to bypass geographic restrictions on TV, video and music streaming websites e.g. Hulu (US only), BBC (UK only) or YouTube music (blocked in Germany) etc.

Tip: if you live outside the US and only want to bypass geographic restrictions on a few sites such as MTV, YouTube, Netflix, Pandora and Grooveshark, see my article on ProxMate – an extension for Firefox and Chrome that does just that.

2. People who want their browsing to be private and anonymous – this may include those who:

a. use public/free wifi connections and want to avoid their web traffic being intercepted by eavesdroppers on the connection
b. live in a country where internet usage is censored
c. want to use the internet without companies like Google (or their broadband provider) keeping track of them

SecurityKISS Tunnel – a free program for Windows and Mac. Customized versions are available via email for Linux, iPhone/iPad, Android and Windows Mobile. It comes with a free plan which is limited to 300MB download per day – a lot more than most free VPN providers and it is easy to buy a paid plan offering a lot more.

SecurityKISS creates a secure VPN between your computer and their security gateway – this prevents third parties from viewing your web browsing activities, downloads, credit card information or anything else you send over the network.

The security gateway servers represent you on the internet and your real internet (IP) address is hidden so you can browse anonymously – and websites will think you are browsing from somewhere else.

Features

  • Easy to use
  • No registration, usernames or passwords required
  • Just download, install and connect
  • Multiple server locations to choose from
  • No adverts
  • Unlimited switching between servers in different countries
  • Extra security – every download of the program is unique, 1024 bit security
  • ‘Exclusive Tunneling’ available

The free plan (included as part of the program) offers a choice of 4 server locations (US, UK, Germany and France) and has speed restrictions.

Paid plans are available – e.g. the Economy plan costs a maximum of $3.77 for one month and offers 20GB data usage per month, unlimited speed, music and video streaming, VOIP and games support, a wider choice of server locations (with more physical servers for faster speeds).

See the website here for more details and comparison of plans.

How To Use SecurityKISS?

1.  Download the program from the website here – every downloaded copy of SecurityKISS is unique – don’t share it or it will stop working for you.

Tip: some weaker antivirus programs (e.g. Avast) may incorrectly warn that the download is suspicious due to the VPN network adapter installed – running the installation file through multiple online scans (e.g. Jotti) and better antivirus programs (e.g. Kaspersky) proves that such warnings were false positives and wrong.

2.  Install the program to display the main window as shown below:

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SecurityKISS – Main Program

This shows the current Plan (Green is the free plan that comes with the program), usage to date and time elapsed so you can easily track how much data you have left.

It also shows your current local IP (within your own network) and external IP (your address on the internet) for information.

3.  Optional: if you want to specify a particular server location (e.g. US if you are wanting to watch Hulu outside of US), click on Option in the menu bar to check/change the server location – the Select Security Gateway window opens as shown below:

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Select Server

Tick the server location that you prefer in the TCP 443 column and press Apply/

4.  Press the Connect button to begin connecting to the SecurityKISS VPN

After a few seconds a message appears that you are now in the encrypted tunnel as shown below:

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Connected Securely To US Server

Note that your local and external IP addresses are now different and the Status shows which server location you are connected to.

5.  Now just browse the web as you normally would – your traffic will be encrypted and passed through the VPN.

Test Results

SecurityKISS worked very well for me and was simple to set up.

Speeds are reduced on the free plan (all paid plans have unlimited speed) – my 20Mbps speed dropped to 2.5Mbps when routed through the VPN on the free plan but this is still very acceptable – it’s far quicker than I ever achieve using the TOR anonymous browsing network.

The free plan is not ‘supposed’ to support music and video streaming. However, in testing, I found that it was able to stream music and video ok. Hulu also worked from outside the US but video streaming would quickly use up all of the free daily data allowance…

The program has a couple of extra neat features:

  • You can Pause and very quickly Resume the connection if you want to break out of the VPN and browse normally for a while – without having to disconnect/reconnect which takes much longer.
  • In the menu Option there is a choice of ‘Exclusive Tunneling’ – this clever feature prevents the sending of any web traffic outside of the VPN tunnel, even if you pause or disconnect the VPN connection.

i.e. you can’t access the internet outside of the tunnel until you deselect this menu option – even if you close SecurityKISS completely. The idea of this is to prevent any temporary disconnection or pause in the VPN tunnel from revealing your real IP address and location via unprotected browsing.

Conclusion

If not wanting to stream music/video the free 300MB daily allowance may be sufficient for light anonymous browsing.

The free plan is also an ideal way of checking if the program does what you need before upgrading to a paid plan. The paid plans are well priced and offer a range of payment options from 1 month up to 1 year via Paypal and Bitcoin etc.

Note that paid plans do not accept credit cards for (hopefully) very obvious reasons – the whole point of a VPN service is to ensure your anonymity and privacy so accepting credit cards is a big no-no. Intermediary services like Paypal are used to keep your identity private.

7 thoughts on “Anonymous Browsing With SecurityKISS”

    • @Mark – like most similar VPNs it offers a free or paid service. Unlike SecurityKISS, the hotspotshield free service includes adverts – last time I tried it I found them quite intrusive (a big banner at the top of every webpage) but they may have changed since.

      You could install and test any of these free versions at home, no need to wait until traveling. Due to the technology that VPNs use the security aspects are similar – but it is worth testing the speed, ease of use, bandwidth limits etc to see if they’re ok for your needs.

  1. Free stuff may have some restrictions on speed and bandwidth limit.
    I use PirateRay to browse and download anonymously with secure encrypted SSH tunnel connections from different parts of the world.

    • Hi Alex, free versions do have some restrictions which is fair as it’s not cheap to provide such a service.

      Hadn’t heard of the site you use but it has no address/company details, the name is a rip off of Pirate Bay, aimed at torrents, accepts credit cards (bad for anonymity) and you have to sign up to download it?

      The price is ok I guess but the above issues would kind of put me off.

      • Hi Roy
        If you visit any other popular site like BTguard, torrentprivacy, etc. you would need to join in order to use or download the application. This is a normal practice.
        PirateRay also accepts Paypal which is the most desirable way of payment for many people.

        And yes, they are aimed at torrents mainly, but what I found out that running Pirateray allows you to change the proxy settings in your browser to access blocked sites and just hide your real ip.
        Some sites are blocked in separate countries, Vimeo – in India, Netflix or Hulu- from outside USA, so there are many opportunities for those people indeed.
        And it is free to try 1 week.

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