New Ghost Path Client Version Available

New Ghost Path VPN Client

We just released a brand new version of the Ghost Path VPN client, and it’s a big one. We’ve released support for Plex, our multi-hop VPN solution that makes our VPN more secure than ever.

We recommend all Ghosts update to the newest version as soon as possible. You can download by logging in at ghostpath.com/members and clicking Downloads.

TAP Driver Fixes

With the recent release of Windows 10 came a slew of networking problems. The TAP drivers utilized by Windows to connect to our OpenVPN setup was problematic before Microsoft released updates. Now we are bundling those updates into this new version to insure that everyone is using the latest TAP drivers.

New Software Privacy Options

The Ghost Path VPN client no longer logs connection activity or IP addresses by default. In certain situations our support team may need connection logs to help diagnose a problem, so we will send instructions for enabling the logs in this rare case.

Will Updating Erase My Ghost Path Configurations?

Updating to the new version of the Ghost Path app retains all settings from the previous version, including your username and your VPN server selections.

Full List of Changes

  • Plex support added (multi-hop VPN connections)
  • Updated OpenVPN version to 2.3.9
  • Windows: Updated TAP drivers.
  • Windows: Use block-outside-dns OpenVPN option on Windows 7 and newer
  • In-client logs and IP address history are now turned off by default.
  • All logs and IP address history data will be deleted on startup when logging is disabled in settings
  • Corrected OpenVPN issue that resulted in “too many servers” error in certain groups.
  • Mac OS X: Fixed bug that resulted in hang during system shutdown
  • Server list timer settings no longer require a restart

As always, contact support if you run into any problems at all.

Latest VPN Server Additions

New VPN Gateways

We’ve added several additional VPN gateways recently in locations where we had existing gateways. This gives us even more capacity in our busiest locations. That means better connectivity and speed for our customers. We’ve recently added additional gateways in the following locations:

  • Phoenix, AZ USA
  • Salt Lake City, UT USA
  • Seattle, WA USA
  • Dallas, TX USA
  • Chicago, IL USA
  • Montreal, Canada
  • Frankfurt, Germany

Why Add Additional VPN Gateways?

The more users you have connecting through a particular gateway the slower it will get. Having 2 servers with 500 users each is preferable to a single server with 1000 users, for example. We want to make sure that our customers never have problems connecting to a server and that they always get the best speeds possible. That’s why we will always continue investing in our network and growing the number of VPN gateways we offer. We’re constantly adding gateways in completely new cities (like Philadelphia or Coventry), but it’s just as important to beef up our capacity in existing cities.

How Do You Use the New Gateways?

Chances are you’re probably already using them if you live near one of the new additions. The “Closest Locations” folder in the Ghost Path VPN client will automatically find them and add them to the rotation. If you want to connect to one of the new servers specifically then you can just create a new location folder and add only the server you want to use. You can also download Viscosity and OpenVPN files from our VPN server list.

New VPN Server in Philadelphia, PA

Philadelphia VPN Server

Update: This gateway has been removed because the host went out of business. We’re working to find a replacement. Sorry for the inconvenience. 

Our latest VPN server is in Philadelphia. This is our first VPN gateway in Philadelphia! We now have several servers in the Northeast US, giving you plenty of connection options in that area.

Ghost Path VPN Servers

Ghost Path operates over 147 VPN gateways in 46+ different countries providing over 229 IP addresses. We are continually expanding and improving our VPN infrastructure so that Ghost Path customers have the best and most reliable VPN connections possible.

How to Use the Philadelphia VPN Server

Open up the Ghost Path VPN client. If you’re in Pennsylvania then the new Philadelphia VPN gateway will automatically show up in your Closest Locations connection folder. If you are outside of Pennsylvania and want to connect to this server then you should create a custom location folder and drag the Philadelphia server into that folder.

About Ghost Path VPN

Ghost Path is a leading VPN provider in the United States. We offer the best privacy and security around and never log your data. We offer a 7-day free trial on select VPN accounts, so give us a try today!

New VPN Server in Coventry, England

VPN Server Coventry England

Our latest VPN server is in Coventry. This is an additional VPN gateway in England! We now have several servers in the UK giving you plenty of connection options in that area.

Ghost Path VPN Servers

Ghost Path operates over 147 VPN gateways in 46+ different countries providing over 229 IP addresses. We are always expanding and improving our VPN infrastructure so that our Ghost Path customers have the best and most reliable VPN connections possible.

How to Use the Coventry, England VPN Server

Open up the Ghost Path VPN client. If you’re in England then the new Coventry VPN gateway will automatically show up in your Closest Locations connection folder. If you are outside of England and want to connect to this server then you should create a custom location folder and drag the Coventry server into that folder.

About Ghost Path VPN

Ghost Path is a leading VPN provider in the United States. We offer the best privacy and security around and never log your data. We offer a 7-day free trial on select VPN accounts, so give us a try today!

How To Tell If Your ISP Is Throttling Facebook Video

ISP Throttling Facebook

By now everyone is familiar with Facebook video, the videos that play automatically as you scroll over them in your Facebook feed. Facebook video is rapidly growing in popularity right now. It’s even starting to rattle the popularity of Youtube in terms of number of videos uploaded daily.

The meteoric rise in popularity over the past year has gotten everyone’s attention, including your ISP. Recently I’ve discovered that Facebook videos stutter, buffer, and load much more slowly than they have in the past, particularly in the evenings. Generally, slowly loading video is caused by one of two things: either the video itself is not being delivered quickly enough from the provider (Facebook in this case) or your internet connection isn’t fast enough to handle the video without issues. I certainly believe that Facebook and a likely myriad of CDN’s can handle the delivery side, so that leaves the ISP as the most likely culprit. I haven’t seen any slowdowns with any other general downloading or browsing, so maybe the problem is related strictly to video. Could my ISP, Uverse, be throttling Facebook video?

This article is going to teach you exactly how to run your own tests to see if your ISP is throttling Facebook video. The easiest device to test with is actually your phone. I have an iPhone and it’s super-easy to change your network settings, which is handy here because you want to be able to change your settings quickly.

You’ll probably want to wait until evening to run your test. I usually notice the slowdowns after 7 PM.

Step 1: Find some video in the Facebook App

Open the Facebook app and scroll through your newsfeed looking for videos. Videos in ads should be ignored… ads always have a knack for not being throttled.

Facebook Video on iPhone

If the video plays smoothly then you may be OK. If you see any signs of buffering or stalling then you should keep testing.

Step 2: Turn Off Your Wi-Fi

Next, turn off your Wi-Fi connection so that you’re using your mobile data provider’s connection. I use Verizon and haven’t ever noticed slow video when I’ve had at least a decent signal, so I trust them for this test. Plus, it’s in Verizon’s best interest for you to use as much data as possible so they can charge you more $$$.

Turn off WiFi on iphone

Once Wi-Fi is disabled scroll through your timeline again looking for videos. All Facebook videos are coming from the same place, so theoretically if one is being throttled then all of them are being throttled. You shouldn’t watch the same video as before because it may be pre-buffered or loaded from your previous viewing.

This is where you would most likely be able to see if your ISP was throttling your connection. If you had poor video playback in step 1 and don’t in step 2 then you’ve found your bottleneck.

Step 3: Testing With A VPN

If you don’t want to use your mobile data to test in Step 2 then you can use a VPN to accomplish the same thing. When you’re connected to a VPN your ISP can’t see what kind of data you’re receiving or where it’s coming from, making it impossible for them to throttle.

Turn on VPN iPhone

The idea here is the same as in Step 2. Once you’re connected to VPN you should look for more videos in the Facebook app and see how they perform.

Testing On Other Devices

You can use the same general procedure to test Facebook video on your desktop, laptop, tablet, etc. You won’t be able to test with your mobile data provider using other devices so you’ll need to rely on a VPN.

Conclusion

As Facebook video grows it wouldn’t be surprising to see more ISP’s try throttling it. Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, HBO Go / HBO Now, and other video sites are easy targets for throttling because they cost ISP’s quite a bit more than general web traffic. You can test to see if your ISP is throttling other services in the same way you test Facebook video.

If you have any questions or comments then leave them below. Let us know if you find any evidence of throttling from your ISP.

New Version of the Ghost Path VPN Client Available

New Version of Ghost Path VPN Client Released

A brand new update to the Ghost Path VPN client is now available! We recommend all Ghosts download and install the new version as soon as possible.

Lots of changes and improvements this time. Here are some of them:

  • Leak protection featured now on by default for new installs.
  • Enhanced leak protection for IPv6.
  • Added ability to add gateway servers, cities, and countries to groups via right click.
  • Allow application to start minimized.
  • Several bug fixes
  • Mac OS X client: added ability to close client with CMD+Q
  • Several other minor changes and fixes.

As always, contact support if you run into any problems at all.

How to Hide an IP Address

How to hide your IP address

Many of us who use the Internet every day have never heard of an IP address., but this simple collection of numbers is a major part of security on the web, and determines how we use parts of a network to access the global Internet.

An IP address is a binary number, made into a set of numbers, that shows where a specific message is coming from on the web. Each device or part of a network has its own IP address according to the Internet Protocol that’s been set up to make Internet use universal. But there are some ways to complicate matters by hiding an IP address and shielding Internet messages from revealing the location and identity of the sender.

IP Addresses and Hacking

In some cases, obscuring the IP address of an Internet signal request has to do with some types of hacking.

One common example is called “IP address spoofing.” This involves forging parts of a data packet to hide the identity of the person who’s sending the message and the network components that he or she is using.

In IP address spoofing, the header of an Internet data packet is changed. Hackers may forge a different address, to make it look like a packet was sent by a different device or network.

IP spoofing is sometimes used in type of cyberattacks called ‘denial of service’ attacks. These attacks can flood victim networks with a lot of traffic and overload a system, and they’re something that today’s businesses and government offices are taking seriously. DoS attacks, as they’re called, can disrupt business and sink revenue, even if the site is only down for a short time.

However, not all IP spoofing is hacking, and this method does have some legitimate uses, for instance, in testing networks or parts of network systems.

Why Would You Hide an IP Address?

Tools for hiding IP addresses aren’t just for hackers.

There are some legitimate reasons why someone might want to shield an IP address.

In some cases, users may simply want to hide their geographical locations. We’ve all heard about Facebook scares, where some users worry that predators or others will get their geographical location from the signals they send over the Internet, to find them and harm them. Although that’s unlikely, hiding an IP address can make a user feel safer.

Also, many networks and services will lock out users from certain geographical locations, a process called geoblocking or geolocation. In any case, it’s not illegal to get around geoblocking, to hide a user’s real location and where he or she is sending from.

In other cases, you may be doing mystery shopping, researching a competitor’s products and services, or doing other kinds of research where revealing the IP address could be damaging to your results.

But one of the most common reasons for hiding IP addresses comes down to something simple — digital marketing. Company web sites and web pages often track all Internet requests, using cookies and other tools. Some of these are pretty sophisticated, and many of us don’t even know they are in place. In some cases, governments have taken a hard look at how data is collected about users online, in order to try to protect consumers, but there’s still an awful lot of tracking out there.

Lots of savvy Internet users want a little protection against this kind of intrusive marketing. They don’t want every web step they take to be endlessly analyzed and responded to, with hyper-aggressive emailing or marketing campaigns. They just want to remain a little bit anonymous over the web. And that’s another reason why users might take steps to hide their IP address from anyone who gets their hands on the data packets, or receives a network request.

How to Hide an IP Address

Generally, those who want to hide an IP address will use some type of VPN, proxy, or smart DNS service.

A proxy is simply a device or component that puts itself in the place of the original device or component to substitute an IP address.

One way to think about this is that in local networks, networks that are not necessarily analyzed by Internet protocol, it’s possible to ‘bounce’ signals around within those networks in ways that don’t get advertised over Internet channels. So, with a proxy, network users put these intermediary servers and other machines in place so that, when they send a message from a private machine, it looks like it’s coming from the public proxy instead.

There are many different types of proxy tools available, as well. For instance, there are web-based proxies that provide these services wirelessly. Then there are hard-wired proxy servers that, as mentioned above, act as go-betweens for a user and a recipient.

Another type of proxy is an anonymity network, where a third party may set up network structures to help others mask an IP address.

All of these are effective for hiding IP addresses and making sure that individual web user behavior isn’t broadcasted to the world. But especially for companies and enterprises, there’s another more common way to put IP address shielding in place.

The Virtual Public Network

A Virtual Public Network or VPN is a valuable security tool. Ghost Path offers state of the art VPN services to help individuals make their web use safer and more effective.

These kinds of setups essentially provide “secure tunnels” for Internet messaging. They connect the public global Internet to private networks and encrypt data securely at the point of exit, so that it travels the Internet in an entirely secure way.

In many VPNs, engineers often put a firewall between the client and host servers, so that remote users have to authenticate themselves and establish their identities. That prevents different types of unauthorized access. Encryption often utilizes certain keys that are held by stakeholders, so that hackers or any other outside parties do not have access to usable data. Instead, they get an encrypted result that is useless in terms of poking and prying for information.

VPN’s also help to deal with dangers related to wi-fi hotspots and all other kinds of situations where sensitive data can get jeopardized as individuals browse the web and transmit data using mobile apps. A real danger is logging into mobile banking over a public wi-fi connection. Hackers can ‘snoop’ data being transmitted on an open wi-fi network and potentially gain access to any data transmitted, including usernames and passwords. Ghost Path can help set up effective VPN structures where every remote user at every level of a business is taken care of, so that no matter if people are using the network in a company office, or out in the field, everything stays safe.

VPN’s and IP Addresses

Not only does connecting to a VPN hide your true IP address, you have the option of choosing the IP address that you want to use. Each of our Ghost Path VPN servers has one or more IP addresses associated with it at any given time. When you connect to that server you are assuming that IP address. For example, if you want to appear to be coming from Las Vegas then choosing the Las Vegas VPN server will accomplish that.

In short, VPN does much more than hiding IP address. It cloaks the remote user from having their identity broadcasted, but it also protects all sorts of sensitive data that you might transmit online, including:

  • usernames and passwords
  • your browsing activity
  • any other data that you transmit

IP Exhaustion & the IPv6 Transition

It’s important to note that the particular technologies in place now to handle IP address documentation may not be around forever. One reason is because the actual agencies in charge of the Internet are starting to change how IP addresses are written, and how they’re used.

In the U.S., agencies like ICANN register Internet domains and addresses. At this time, regulatory agencies around the world are moving from an IPv4 to an IPv6 format. The IPv4 format, which included 32-bit numbers, has become impacted by what professionals call ‘exhaustion,’ and IPv6 is a way to extend the these addresses to fit a much larger global user base than existed when the Internet was originally built.

Looking Toward the Future of Privacy

To continue to keep on top of new technologies, check out what Ghost Path is doing around the world. Our servers are popping up in many different countries worldwide, as we anticipate the biggest security and privacy changes that our customers will see in the coming years.

New VPN Server in Auckland

Auckland VPN server

Our latest VPN server is in Auckland. This is our first ever VPN gateway in New Zealand! We now have several servers in southeast Asia and Australia / New Zealand, giving you plenty of connection options in that area.

Ghost Path VPN Servers

Ghost Path operates over 131 VPN gateways in 41+ different countries providing over 200 IP addresses. We are always expanding and improving our VPN infrastructure so that our Ghost Path customers have the best and most reliable VPN connections possible.

How to Use the Auckland, New Zealand VPN Server

Open up the Ghost Path VPN client. If you’re in New Zealand then the new Auckland VPN gateway will automatically show up in your Closest Locations connection folder. If you are outside of New Zealand and want to connect to this server then you should create a custom location folder and drag the Auckland server into that folder.

About Ghost Path VPN

Ghost Path is a leading VPN provider in the United States. We offer the best privacy and security around and never log your data. We offer a 7-day free trial on select VPN accounts, so give us a try today!

New VPN Server in Morganton, NC

Morganton, NC VPN Server

Our latest VPN server is in Morganton, NC. With the addition of Morganton we now have several VPN gateways in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states, giving US users a variety of connection options.

Ghost Path VPN Servers

Ghost Path is now operating over 132 VPN gateways in 41+ different countries providing over 200 IP addresses. We will always be expanding our VPN infrastructure to insure that Ghost Path customers have the best and most reliable VPN service anywhere.

How to Connect to the Morganton VPN Server

Open up the Ghost Path VPN client. If you’re in the Southeast US then the new Morganton VPN gateway will automatically show up in your Closest Locations connection folder. If you are outside of the Southeast or Mid-Atlantic and want to connect to Morganton then you should create a custom location folder and drag the Morganton, NC server into that folder.

About Ghost Path VPN

Ghost Path is a leading VPN provider in the United States. We offer a 7-day free trial on select VPN accounts, so give us a try today!

New VPN Server in Macau

Macau VPN Server

Our latest VPN server is in Macau. We now have serves in Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. That means we have Asia covered.

Ghost Path VPN Servers

Ghost Path is now operating over 131 VPN gateways in 41+ different countries providing over 200 IP addresses. We are always expanding and improving our VPN infrastructure so that our Ghost Path customers have the best and most reliable VPN connections possible.

How to Use the Macau VPN Server

Open up the Ghost Path VPN client. If you’re in Macau then the new Macau VPN gateway will automatically show up in your Closest Locations connection folder. If you are outside of Macau and want to connect to this server then you should create a custom location folder and drag the Macau server into that folder.

About Ghost Path VPN

Ghost Path is a leading VPN provider in the United States. We offer a 7-day free trial on select VPN accounts, so give us a try today!