Your Freedom User Guide A Step By Step Introduction And Reference Guide To Your Freedom http://www.your-freedom.net/ Version 1.2 Release Date: 2007-01-25 Your Freedom User Guide Page 2 of 52 All trademarks used in this guide are trademarks of their respective owners and only used for reference. The most current version of this guide is available from our web page, http://www.your-freedom.net/, in the Documentation section. Please check if there is a later copy available if you encounter problems or you cannot find needed information in this copy. This guide is © Copyright 2006, 2007 by resolution Reichert Network Solutions GmbH, Saarbrücken, Germany. All rights reserved. You are welcome to copy and distribute this guide in both electronic and paper form as long as you distribute it as a whole and not in parts, you do not modify it in any way, and the reference to the original location is kept intact. Please advise all recipients that distributed copies may not be the latest version of the document, and that they can always download the latest version from our web site. Your Freedom User Guide Page 3 of 52 Index 1 Introduction.......................................................................................................... 5 1.1 What is Your Freedom? ............................................................................... 5 1.2 What is it not? .............................................................................................. 5 1.3 What can I use it for? ................................................................................... 5 1.4 How does it work? ........................................................................................ 6 1.5 Is it secure? Is it anonymous? Does it compromise my security? Can I catch a virus? ................................................................................................................... 7 1.6 What does it cost?........................................................................................ 8 1.7 Is Your Freedom "Spyware" or "AdWare"?................................................... 8 1.8 How many servers do you have? Are they all the same?............................. 8 2 First steps.......................................................................................................... 10 2.1 Registration process................................................................................... 10 2.2 Getting and installing the client software .................................................... 10 2.3 Connecting for the first time ....................................................................... 11 2.4 Configure applications................................................................................ 19 2.4.1 Automatically....................................................................................... 19 2.4.2 Manually.............................................................................................. 21 2.5 Sophisticated configurations ...................................................................... 26 2.5.1 The Your Freedom configuration dialog .............................................. 26 2.5.2 The Your Freedom client configuration file.......................................... 33 2.5.3 Configuration options .......................................................................... 33 2.6 Starting and stopping the connection ......................................................... 39 2.6.1 Each user may only log in once .......................................................... 39 2.7 Choosing the right server ........................................................................... 39 2.7.1 Server location .................................................................................... 39 2.7.2 Protocols ............................................................................................. 40 2.7.3 CGI relays ........................................................................................... 40 2.8 Using "socksifiers" ...................................................................................... 43 2.8.1 Windows ............................................................................................. 44 2.8.2 Linux and other Unix derivates............................................................ 44 2.8.3 Mac OS X............................................................................................ 44 2.9 OpenVPN support ...................................................................................... 44 2.9.1 Introduction ......................................................................................... 44 2.9.2 Prerequisites ....................................................................................... 44 2.9.3 Configuration tasks ............................................................................. 45 2.9.4 Configure your applications................................................................. 47 2.9.5 Troubleshooting .................................................................................. 47 Your Freedom User Guide Page 4 of 52 3 Advanced usage................................................................................................ 48 3.1 FreeFreedom (usage free of charge) ......................................................... 48 3.2 Packages ................................................................................................... 48 3.3 Test drives.................................................................................................. 50 4 Troubleshooting................................................................................................. 50 4.1 Why does my app/game not work? ............................................................ 50 4.2 Creating a "dump" file................................................................................. 51 4.3 Using a packet sniffer................................................................................. 51 4.4 Using encrypted email to contact us........................................................... 51 Your Freedom User Guide Page 5 of 52 1 Introduction 1.1 What is Your Freedom? Is your Internet access somehow restricted? Are some web pages not accessible to you, or are you unable to run applications because of such restrictions? Then Your Freedom is for you. Although the techniques used by Your Freedom to break through such restrictions are fairly complicated, it is not difficult to use. Your Freedom is a Connectivity Service that allows you to overcome connectivity restrictions imposed upon you by your network administrators, your provider or your country. It also provides a certain level of anonymization, and it hides from your administrators and other nosy people close to you what you are doing on the Internet. It works by turning your local PC into a web proxy and a SOCKS proxy that can be used by your applications (web browser, games, whatever). Instead of connecting directly, applications can send connection requests to these "proxy servers" provided by the client part of the Your Freedom software running on your PC, and the client part will then forward these requests to the server part running on our connectivity servers through a connection protocol that is still available to you and through which the client part can reach the server part. It tunnels through firewalls, web proxies, FTP proxies and the like. Sounds complicated? Well it is, but the good news is you don't have to worry about it, that's our job. 1.2 What is it not? Your Freedom is not a VPN software. It does not provide a connection to a private network but to the Internet. Your Freedom is not a firewall solution, it is meant to break through firewalls, not to be one. It does not make your PC any safer. But that's likely not your concern because someone is probably protecting you too well anyway. Your Freedom is not a perfect anonymizer. The service does provide a certain level of anonymization by hiding your IP address. Instead, the connection request appears to come (in fact it does come) from one of our connectivity server IP addresses. But it cannot protect you from your own mistakes or flaws in applications and protocols. Your Freedom is not in any way enhancing your connection. It does not provide data compression and it cannot speed it up in any way; in fact, there is a certain amount of overhead which is dependent on the connectivity protocol used, so things will probably run slower, not faster. 1.3 What can I use it for? Your Freedom can be used to overcome: · Protocol restrictions If you cannot use certain applications or services because these applications cannot connect to the Internet in the usual way, Your Freedom may be able to help you. For example, if your favourite online game does not work in your place because someone decided that you shouldn't play it, then try Your Freedom. Games known to work well include: WOW, EVE, Counterstrike and Your Freedom User Guide Page 6 of 52 many others. You may not use P2P protocols because someone thinks it's illegal 1 ? Most P2P clients work nicely with Your Freedom, and you can even get a server port, which gives you a "high id". Blacklists You may not visit certain web pages? Try Your Freedom. It turns your local PC into an unrestricted web proxy that provides access to all web pages that are generally accessible. Time restrictions We have heard from users that they use Your Freedom to avoid time restrictions. In most cases, existing connections are not disrupted by such restrictions, and therefore all they need to do is to start the Your Freedom client before the restriction is in place, and keep it open. The connection between the client and the server part is persistent (this depends on the connection protocol, however). · · 1.4 How does it work? You need to run the client part of the Your Freedom software on your local PC. It is written in Java and should normally run on nearly every PC without the need for administrator rights. We also provide installer versions that do not require Java to be installed, but you may need administrator rights to install these. The client software then connects to one of our servers through a connection protocol that is still available to you. In most cases this will probably be a HTTP connection through a web proxy that you may use, or a "HTTPS" or FTP connection. In many places, UDP may be used as well. In most cases all you'll need to provide is the address of a web or an FTP proxy (and probably authentication credentials); the client will take it from there and find a way to connect if one exists. Have a look at the picture below. The box on the left is your PC. Let's say the restrictive firewall won't let you access hotmail.com and you want to read your private email from your workplace; fire up the Your Freedom client and let it connect to one of our servers, configure your web browser to use it, and your web browser will be able to connect to hotmail.com by connecting to the Your Freedom client, who will forward the requests to one of our servers, who will then forward the request to the hotmail.com server. The replies from the hotmail.com server will take the same route backwards. 1 The protocol is of course not illegal and it's therefore silly to block it; we know best because we had to block it on some servers as well but it remains open on most. Your actions may be illegal though ­ Your Freedom can't do anything about this, it remains your responsibility. Your Freedom User Guide Page 7 of 52 This is only a very simple scenario but it illustrates that the Your Freedom client application and the Your Freedom server act as intermediate hops for your application connections. 1.5 Is it secure? Is it anonymous? Does it compromise my security? Can I catch a virus? Connecting to the Internet through Your Freedom is generally less dangerous than connecting through a dial-up connection. As long as you do not explicitly configure a server port forward, no-one can connect to your PC though Your Freedom. But since you may download data from the Internet that may then be executed on your PC (intentionally or unintentionally because of application bugs) there is a certain amount of risk; it's the same as if you connect through any other means to the Internet and download data from there. However it is possible that your company or whatever uses sophisticated protection mechanisms (e.g. virus checking for downloads from servers on the Internet) that we do not provide; in this case it is indeed less secure. But please consider that it is less secure because it allows you to do things that you would otherwise not be able to do ­ the most secure protection from the dangers of the Internet is an Air Gap, i.e.: pull the plug. You'll be safe but also lonely. It has been said before that Your Freedom is not a full-blown anonymization service. It wil ...