Viscosity is a program that we pay for; it makes installation easier for our users (you).

30 days after installation, the Viscosity connection program will ask you to register. You can find the license information by logging into your account information, here: https://secure.cryptohippie.com/login.php.
You will find a box on the first page that lets you create a license, please copy and paste the data exactly as shown into the Viscosity registration window.

There are issues with the current Windows version of the Viscosity connection software.
Please DO NOT update Viscosity if such an update is offered since it will break your system.

Either one will work, but UDP is slightly faster.

They are actually the same as tcp and udp, mentioned above.

That's a special connection type we created for old satellite systems and other very difficult connections. Don't use it unless you really have to.

No, you should use one only.

When you connect to the wifi service (at a Starbucks, or whatever), then connect to us, all your traffic will be passing through a strongly encrypted connection. The wiretapper next door can't read your traffic. All your surfing exits our network in OUR name, and with OUR contact info. Unless you tell them, no one will know that it comes from you. (Exceptions to the above if the NSA is willing to spend ten million dollars finding you.)

No. You may use either one, but not both simultaneously.

No, we won't do either of those things. A few weeks before your account expires, a red RENEW button will appear on your Accounts page: https://secure.cryptohippie.com/login.php.

Yes, you do. We suggest that you have your browser remember the login data; it makes things much simpler.

Once you connect to our network and login, you are protected. There is nothing else necessary. You can do everything as you normally do.

Yes. You can install and use RoadWarrior from multiple computers. All connections would then be accounted under your account and traffic being deducted.
However, our Viscosity installation software will only work on one operating system: Mac or Windows or Linux – but not all of them. If you want to use multiple operating systems, you'll have to use our old installation process.

25GB is equivalent to about 7,000 songs or 10 million emails. So, you are not likely to go over the limit.

Most of the time nothing happens because we roll over traffic between accounts. If use is much higher we offer the customer to either pay for over-traffic (1 EU/GB currently) or to shorten their contract accordingly (2 days per GB of over-traffic).

We do not offer port forwarding or client-specific IP addresses within our consumer products. Our enterprise products can optionally be equipped with incoming gateway functionality and client-specific outgoing IP addresses.

The answer is "yes" and "no." It strongly depends on both the type of satellite connection and the specific product you use. For Road Warrior accounts, most satellite connections will work given that they have a latency below 2 seconds (which is the case for Thurya and similar). Our CryptoRouters work much better with satellite, up to latencies of about 10 seconds and disconnects of up to 2 minutes. It is important that the connection allows full IP streams (many satellite connections are only allowing streams to their proxies).

No. However, if you go over consistently, we’ll just shorten your account accordingly. (This happens very rarely and we’re not interested in ‘nickel and diming’ our customers.)

Road Warrior is software only.

The sites are coming up in German because that's where they think you are... which is good. And solving this is usually simple:
Look around the sites for a choice to click on a British or American flag. Other times there will be a link. At Google, for example, there is a small link that says "google.com in English". On Yahoo, there is a small link that read "Yahoo.com".
On the rare occasions where neither of the above apply, you can change the url: Where you see ".de", change it to .com or .us, then hit enter.

have? If you look at the bottom on the login page, or almost all pages at our site, you'll see your status. Also, if you go to a site that senses your location, such as Google, you'll probably see that they think you're in Germany or the Netherlands (the locations of most of our exit nodes).

Any browser will work just fine with our system, but we recommend the Firefox browser. We also recommend that if you are running Firefox, you go to the TOOLS menu, then choose ADD-ONS, then EXTENSIONS, then search for "noscript". Install this. It will forbid Java as a default, and allow you to turn it on as required.
You should also get the “Better Privacy” extension for Firefox.

Yes, you should have one. But, please do NOT use McAfee or Kaspersky, they are known not to work with VPN privacy systems.

We do not filter cookies or in any way filter or modify data streams your computer makes or requests. We do only change the protocol information on the IP-layer.
The thing we suggest is that you set your browser to purge cookies and cache on quit, or that you use private browsing available in modern browsers. The problem with filtering cookies as data travels through our system is twofold:

1. We could not access the contents of your data streams, even if we wanted. So we cannot change the contents, including cookies.
2. Filtering out all cookies would drastically reduce usability of websites. Many websites require cookies for session-tracking and authentication.

So, your best choice (in our opinion), is to purge cookies after you leave any site that concerns you, or have them universally deleted every time you close your browser. (Most browsers have a setting for this.)

Not yet, but stay tuned. :)

No. We don’t scan your traffic, so we don’t filter out cookies, etc. We recommend that you set your browser to delete them on closing, but that’s your choice.

Mostly. Some have geo-restrictions, and they may be hidden from you. Download speed will also be reduced a bit.

That's your choice. We don’t watch your traffic. We recommend the NoScript extension for Firefox.

No. The Cryptohippie network does not not correlate traffic details with your login details. At worst, someone could use your account without authorization.

Yes, the dashes should always remain in.

Yes, but you can't set it to anything you like. Our system will generate new passwords for you.
And, if you do reset your password, you'll end up with two passwords: One for your account information and another for logging on to the network.

Road Warrior: Yes.
Enterprise products: No. Requires hardware appliances that run partially proprietary software.

We force DNS traffic to our own servers to prevent DNS leaks that can break anonymity. Users are free to use non-standard ports for DNS if they want.

Right, those competitors operate single-hop proxies, which are cheaper to operate and far less secure.

Yes. A multi-jurisdictional VPN like ours will definitely slow you down. Usually it’s not that much, but if you live for ever-faster speeds, you’ll have to make a choice.

Credit card, SWIFT, US check, money order or cash, Bitcoin, Pecunix, Liberty Reserve, gold or silver coins.

For our Road Warrior product no data is mandatory. However, we prefer to have an email address so we can contact you for support. For some enterprise products we require IDs.

Consumer products: OpenVPN, IPSec/L2TP
Enterprise products: OpenVPN, IPSEC/GRE, IPSec/L2TP, PPP over MIX, OpenVPN over MIX.
OpenVPN preconfigurations: Ubuntu Linux, Windows (XP,Vista), Mac OS 10.4+

There isn't one. We’re out here on the frontier. So far as we know, all of our competitors are simple, single-hop proxies, which stopped being a secure technology five or ten years ago.

Not really. Sessions are encrypted with ephemeral keys, so they would vanish fast, and the sessions aren’t associated with IDs or meat-space identifiers. They could, of course, grab our bank records and find out who has paid via credit card, but it would stop there – that info is not associated with use data. I suppose they could try to lock us in cages, but there really wouldn't be much that we could tell them. They could, however, cause us to close-up. That would be the more likely attack vector.

For Safari:

1. Open Safari
2. In the menu, click on Safari -> Preferences
3. In the new window, click the "autofill"-tab
4. Enable "AutoFill web forms: User names and passwords"
5. Close the preferences window and close Safari.
6. Reopen Safari. On the first login to our website you
will be asked if you want to store the password.

For Internet Explorer:
TOOLS >> INTERNET OPTIONS >> CONTENT >> AUTO-COMPLETE

For Firefox:
TOOLS >> OPTIONS >> PRIVACY >> REMEMBER SEARCH & FORM HISTORY

1. Go to the preferences/options for Firefox.
2. Select the "Security Tab"
3. Make sure that "Remember passwords for sites" is activated/selected.
4. Click "Exceptions" below "Passwords". A new window opens: "Passwords for the following sites will not be saved".
5. Make sure that "secure.cryptohippie.com" is not in that list.
6. Close all preferences and log into our site again.
7. Firefox will ask you if it should store the password. Answer "Yes".
8. Subsequent logins to our site will then work with pre-filled fields.

Yes, all Road Warrior subscribers are entitled to a secure email account on the Cryptogroup server.

1. Login to your account information here: https://secure.cryptohippie.com/login.php
2. Click on MAIL/IM.
3. Play the video you find there and follow along with the instructions. Go slowly and remember that you can pause, rewind or replay the video.

Cryptogroup mail, aside from being on a very secure, encrypted server, etc., strips all of your personal information from your emails. Then everything between you and the far end of our network is encrypted. This protection, however, does not extend all the way to your recipients. If we encrypted the last link to your recipient, they wouldn't be able to read it. (They would see gibberish.) Your email will be coming out of a 'black hole,' but that last link exposes you to some extent. For full email protection, the recipient must cooperate with you in one of two ways:

1. Become a member of our network. This is best, since everything will then stay inside our network and no one will know that you communicated with the other person.
2. Encrypt the email text. To do that, you would use PGP or GnuPG.

PGP Corp. sells a nice personal encryption program (which comes with support) for under $100. You should also have no trouble finding the free GnuPG software (which does not come with support). Both are easy to operate, after the first few times.
One caveat: If you buy the PGP program, make sure you turn off all the extra features. PGP Corp. is trying to sell a “complete email solution.” That's probably not what you want. Turn off all the extras and just use the encryption.

1000 MB.

You can. Go to TOOLS &qt;&qt; ACCOUNT SETTINGS. Choose "Synchronization & Storage". Then, Uncheck "Keep messages on this computer".

Yes, all Road Warrior subscribers do.

First, you must have a chat program. We recommend Adium or Pidgin. But, any XMPP chat client is fine. Then:

1. Login to your account information here: https://secure.cryptohippie.com/login.php
2. Click on MAIL/IM.
3. Use the settings you find on this page for your chat client.

For Road Warrior accounts we only account for traffic. This happens without logging or storing any IP addresses. The accounting is done with a session time precision of 24 hours only, without doing session counts.

Our servers are located in secure, professional data centers and are maintained by operators working under contract with us.

We use several methods:

1. IP addresses are used by many sessions at the same time. All IP addresses within a cascade are shared by all users on the cascade.
2. Entry and exit gateways are usually operated by different legal entities and usually (but not in every case) are located in different jurisdictions.
3. We multiplex connections between entry and exit gateways.
4. We mix packets between entry and exit gateways.
5. Internode encryption.
6. Jurisdiction aware exit node allocation.
7. VPN-termination never done on entry node.

It would require at least two subpoenas in two jurisdictions. It would also require the session to be still active.

For Road Warrior accounts, traffic logs include only the total amount of traffic per day per user account. No other information is stored. For Enterprise products there are no traffic or session logs.
User names are not connected with network data, authentication keys or similar. However, email-addresses for optional incoming email service can in some cases be connected to payment data.
User data is only available to our sales companies, not to network companies. Network data is not available to sales companies. Data is not stored on the same servers.

No.

Not by default. But we retain the right to block certain ports or route them via protocol-specific gateways. For example, SMTP traffic will always take a special route different from all other traffic.

Yes, we run our own and use direct resolving.

No. We do however redirect NXDOMAIN to blackrouted IP to prevent certain kinds of leaks over DNS.

None by default. Should the owner of an IP request blocking we will usually comply, such as in cases of DDoS, cracking attempts and fraud. These blocks are usually temporary.
Under certain circumstances (massive seeding) we temporarily block specific BT-trackers if we receive DMCA notices or equivalent. Currently no IP is blocked.

We don't log DNS requests.

We do not log data on the secure email. However, outgoing mail through our smarthost is "tagged" by a cryptographic proof so that we can identify spammers (and shut down their accounts). It is currently NOT available as a stand-alone product.

Our Road Warrior network currently consists of over a dozen servers in multiple cascades. We also operate an undisclosed number of servers and cascades for enterprise clients. All server administration is audited by us.

Various parts of our operations are distributed over companies in various jurisdictions. Panama is the main country of network operations, USA and Switzerland are customer services and contact. We also have technical services in Germany.

Yes.

Cryptohippie.net is our network operator. It's registered and operating from Panama. Cryptohippie.com is one of two sales companies. It is responsible for customer contact, authentication, and support. Dot-.com has no influence on network operations, it only authenticates users. Dot-net has no access to customer records.

2 multi-jurisdictional hops or more, depending.