Added: Secure Personal USA IP Subscription (visit YouTube, Hulu, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, other US sites); Long-awaited Mac OS X Compatibility; 3 Fast Servers for the Free Online Anonymizer. Updated: SmartHide now has a Modern Website and software design; Tariff Plans to be more reliable. These improvements are made by Arovax Company team to satisfy all wishes and requirements of SmartHide users.

On June 19, 2010 the company Arovax is happy to announce the great release for another SmartHide v.2.3.297 that brings some more present-day innovations and changes.

SmartHide Homepage Redesign

We have redesigned website to make it more user-friendly and modern. We have used bright colors and fresh styles but SmartHide logo – Octopus stays the same. Octopus symbolizes the main concept of SmartHide – the ability for the Internet traffic encryption and to hide IP like octopus does mask his skin.

We have launched long-awaited Personal USA IP

A lot of SmartHide users asked us to implement Personal USA IP to visit USA websites from different countries like MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Bebo, Hi5, eBay, CraigsList, Hulu and MORE.

Updated Subscription Plans

At the moment there are 2 types of paid services: Personal Subscriptions and Prepaid Licenses.

Personal Subscription includes 3 more types: EUR Subscription (Personal EUR IP, no shared servers available); USA Subscription (Personal USA IP, no shared servers available); V.I.P. Subscription (Personal EUR IP, Personal USA IP + 8 shared IPs from different countries).

Prepaid Licenses consist of 2 classes: EUR License (Personal EUR IP, no shared servers available) and USA License (Personal USA IP, no shared servers available).

The differences between Personal Subscriptions and Prepaid Licenses are as follows:

Prepaid Licenses do not include Shared Servers, Your card is NOT billed automatically and there is no Personal Manager.

SmartHide Software Skin has been Rebuilt

Now SmartHide has a new face. New appearance of the software is closely connected with the new original website design. The GUI of SmartHide has been styled this way in order to provide users with all SmartHide features in a simple way.

A new info tab has been added to show the account info and latest SmartHide news. Therefore, there is no need to visit SmartHide Homepage in order to get additional info.

In addition, we have fixed several issues and improved feedback built in a software to make it easy-to-use and fast. All of these changes make SmartHide more reliable and useful for our customers.

From now on SmartHide Supports Apple Mac OS X

After numerous requests from our customers and Internet users, we have created SmartHide MacOS edition. Today all Mac PC owners can easily use SmartHide for Internet traffic encryption and to hide IP on a daily basis.

FREE SmartHide Online Anonymizer now has 3 FREE servers (USA, Lithuania, Germany).

Free Online Anonymizer can be used to get the main idea of the SmartHide service. It has some limitations:

1. No ability to access social sites such as YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook, etc.
2. No Internet traffic encryption
3. Slow Internet speed
4. Real IP address is hidden only when you are using browser. In all other software connected to the Internet a real IP address is visible (email clients, IMs, etc.)

What our customers say about SmartHide innovations

“I am very glad that SmartHide team improves software on a regular basis. There is no similar Internet traffic encryption solution providing such services as SmartHide does.”

About the author

Richard Torn is writing in the Internet for more than 4 years and recommends Internet users to give a try for SmartHide – the best Internet traffic encryption software on the Internet available.

I would like to remind, that SmartHide Portable does not require installation! Just insert your flash card and launch SmartHide and stay protected and anonymous in the Airports Worldwide, Hotels, Cafes, Wi-Fi Zones and other places to access World Wide Web. Wherever you are - it takes just one button click to get access to the blocked web-resources around the World and gain complete anonymity and personal information protection.

Every user of SmartHide Service is now able to own a flash card or any external hard drive with a SmartHide Portable application on it. And whenever you need protection – just launch it and stay hidden, like our Octopus, who becomes hidden for the enemy when the danger occurs.

SmartHide Portable can run from a removable storage device such as a USB flash drive, flash card, or external Hard Disk Drive. It does not leave its files or settings on the host computer. This means that SmartHide Portable does not write to the Windows registry and instead stores its settings in a configuration file located in its directory.

Arovax SmartHide Portable Edition is available free of charge for all current clients of SmartHide Service and can be downloaded from SmartHide Members Area at:
http://www.smarthide.com/members/

A new release of SmartHide for Windows family of OSs is out! Current release has a number of bugs fixed and several important changes implemented.

Compatibility with Windows 7.

In the nearest future a new member of Windows OS family will show up – Microsoft Windows 7. According to requests from a lot of users who have Windows 7 Beta already installed as a primary OS on their computers – SmartHide Team has adopted Arovax SmartHide service client to work flawlessly with the upcoming Windows 7, without waiting for the official release from Microsoft.

As for now, SmartHide v. 2.2.221 is fully compatible with Windows 7, Windows XP and Windows Vista. It offers a maximum level of protection of your personal data in the Internet, delivering excellence in hiding your identity and encrypting all your traffic.

Changes in the installation procedure.

Arovax SmartHide v. 2.2.221 has minor changes in the installation procedure. New installation process offers you to enter your Login and Password right during the installation, allowing you to quickly get the list of available SmartHide servers.

SmartHide Blogs.

SmartHide is not just a program, that allows it’s users to secure their personal data in the Internet, but a great Service, that is constantly evolving and does it’s best in the mission of helping all internet users to feel Safe, Secure and Free while browsing the World Wide Web. That is why SmartHide team has launched two Blogs, that you can easily access from the SmartHide Tray menu.

The first Blog is called SmartHide with Danny and it gives you a behind-the-scenes look at SmartHide Development. Adding this Blog to your bookmarks or RSS reader will allow you to be up-to-date on everything that is related to SmartHide Project. You will be among the first to read interesting articles about future of SmartHide development, our goals and achievements. Our blog readers will also be the first to find out about special offers and discounts from Arovax Company and SmartHide Team. In general – SmartHide with Danny is a place you want to keep an eye on if you are a part of SmartHide Community.

The second blog is Security Octopus. It is dedicated to the mission of keeping SmartHide Community up-to-date regarding all the security-related news and interesting facts around the problem of identity protection and data encryption.

More and more internet users around the World suffer from all the sorts of restrictions set by the Governments in different countries. People are not able to explore the World Wide Web, communicate with each other and get access to the information they need. We get a lot of reports daily from users who face the problem of stealing their personal data, such as E-mails, social networks accounts, intercepting their passwords while using free WI-Fi access points, etc. In our Blog we will try to address all these facts and gather all the related news and information in one place – Security Octopus blog. Add it to your Bookmarks or RSS reader and stay tuned!

We have no doubt, that as for now, SmartHide is one of the best solutions to save your private data in the Internet. We constantly develop and are aimed at making our Service even more qualitative and affordable.

SmartHide users do not think about all the dangers and problems World Wide Web has prepared for them – they just use and enjoy it.

Exisiting Arovax SmartHide users can download the update from SmartHide Members Area or by updating straight from the current SmartHide client, already installed on your computer.

A Portable Edition of the most user-friendly hide IP address and network connection encryption Software – SmartHide 2.2.192 is being released!

On May 28, 2009 the company Arovax is happy to announce a release of a “traveler’s best friend” -  Arovax SmartHide V. 2.2.192 Portable Edition. Starting from today we offer an ability to turn ON quickly a safe data transfer in different public places and internet access points all over the world even easier than ever before!

SmartHide Portable does not require installation! Just insert your flash card and launch SmartHide and stay protected and anonymous in the Airports Worldwide, Hotels, Cafes, Wi-Fi Zones and other places to access World Wide Web. Wherever you are - it takes just one button click to get access to the blocked web-resources around the World and gain complete anonymity and personal information protection.

Feel free and safe with SmartHide Portable - anywhere in the World!

Every user of SmartHide Service is now able to own a flash card or any external hard drive with a SmartHide Portable application on it. And whenever you need protection – just launch it and stay hidden, like our Octopus, who becomes hidden for the enemy when the danger occurs.

SmartHide Portable can run from a removable storage device such as a USB flash drive, flash card, or external Hard Disk Drive. It does not leave its files or settings on the host computer. This means that SmartHide Portable does not write to the Windows registry and instead stores its settings in a configuration file located in its directory.

Arovax SmartHide Portable Edition is available free of charge for all current clients of SmartHide Service and can be downloaded from SmartHide Members Area at:
http://www.smarthide.com/members/

On April 20, 2009 the company Arovax released a new, advanced version of SmartHide, unique Hide IP Software for Web anonymous surfing and network connection encryption.

The current release has a few modern features helping to hide IP faster and providing an unapproachable anonymous and safe surfing for home and office users.

Please find below 6 most important modifications that have been introduced to the recent Arovax SmartHide release:

1. Revised user interface
The new SmartHide v. 2.2.192 offers a considerably revised UI. We’ve tried to organize the access to the main SmartHide functions in the shortest possible way. The tab containing settings was renamed into Home and the functions related to SmartHide launch and connection were removed from there. The settings are available using the link Click here to get more settings. Besides that from tab Home a user can access the members’ area (where you can check your account status or set up Port forward) or to the forgotten password recovery dialog.

The Log tab has become more informative and contains now more information. A separate dialog has been created for settings.

2. Fast server switch from the tray menu
The connection to any SmartHide server has become much easier now. Just right click on SmartHide icon in the tray and select in Servers submenu the required IP. The connection will start right away, even if SmartHide has already connected to another server. One of the servers in the menu will have a tick next to it. If the tick is green – the connection to this server is active. If gray – the connection is not active or in progress.

For those who value speed and comfort we’ve created a special Fast connection menu. All you have to do is to click on SmartHide icon in the tray while holding Shift button at the same time and you will get the Fast connection menu open with the list of available servers. There is another way to activate this menu – to click on SmartHide icon in the tray with the middle mouse button.

3. Additional options in settings dialog
All the settings are now presented in one dialog and divided into categories. The first category is General. Here you can set up the automatic SmartHide update or hiding the window to the tray at the startup.

The second category – Connection. Here we have all the settings related to SmartHide connection to servers. For example, you can “order” SmartHide here to connect to the server automatically at the startup.
And the last category is Visibility List. See more details about this category below.

4. Possibility to enter sites into Visibility List
Now if you need certain sites to see you real IP address, all you have to do is just enter this site into Visibility List and after pressing Apply Settings button all requests to this site will be performed directly, leaving SmartHide servers behind. It’s worth mentioning that ad banners, streaming video and other elements imported to the site from other resources will see the IP address of a SmartHide server. This feature allows to hide your real IP address from a strange harmful code located on a trustworthy resource.

The new feature will be useful in case you want to speed up the access to some of the sites. E.g. if a site has a hosting located at your provider, there is no sense (unless you need anonymity) to make the traffic go around the world when the server with the site is located just a couple of blocks away from you. Gamers will appreciate this feature as well because after putting the game server into Visibility List, pings become much less frequent (under condition that the game server and the user are located in one region and SmartHide server, to which the connection was made, in another).

5. Vista x64 compatibility
And finally the new SmartHide v. 2.2.192 is fully compatible with Vista x64.

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6. PayPal Subscriptions
On the numerous requests of the users who would like to register Arovax SmartHide using PayPal – we have finally added an alternative payment processor Plimus allowing to create a PayPal Subscription! Please visit SmartHide Register page and look for the SmartHide PayPal Subscription option.

Arovax recommends all SmartHide users to update their copies to the latest 2.2.192 release of  Arovax SmartHide.

Complete change log of Arovax SmartHide v.2.2.192:
*New: Vista x64 compatibility
*New: Revised user interface
*New: Fast server switch from the tray menu
*New: Improved VPN engine
*New: Additional options in settings dialog
*New: Possibility to enter sites into Visibility List
*Fixed: Text links updating during language change
*Fixed: News tab hanging up while opening
*Fixed: After Personal IP selection and SmartHide restart the selection is not saved
*Fixed: With the activated option “Reconnect” and deactivated “SmartHide server change” the connection status is shown incorrectly during the reconnection.
*Fixed: Unstable News tab behavior
*Fixed: Multiple memory leaks

Arovax LLC is an innovative software development company focused on high-quality and user friendly Online Security & Privacy Solutions. Visit SmartHide Home page for more information to hide ip and encrypt all your traffic.

So here it is:

Version 2.2.192 [April 20, 2009]
*New: Vista x64 compatibility
*New: Revised user interface
*New: Fast server switch from the tray menu
*New: Improved VPN engine
*New: Additional options in settings dialog
*New: Possibility to enter sites into Visibility List
*Fixed: Text links updating during language change
*Fixed: News tab hanging up while opening
*Fixed: After Personal IP selection and SmartHide restart the selection is not saved
*Fixed: With the activated option “Reconnect” and deactivated “SmartHide server change” the connection status is shown incorrectly during the reconnection.
*Fixed: Unstable News tab behavior
*Fixed: Multiple memory leaks

I will post a detailed description of the new version goodies tomorrow.

I am going to wrap up the and release the product in the nearest future. Please stay tuned for more great news from Dev. team.

I have some good news for you

With our current processing provider Share-it! we are not able to offer our customers the most popular way to pay for any service online – subscriptions by PayPal. For the current moment we can accept PayPal only for Prepaid licenses. That brings inconvenience to those SmartHide users, who can pay by PayPal and they have to buy Prepaid license over and over again as their card is not automatically billed. We’ve been receiving a lot of requests recently from our users asking us to implement PayPal Subscription option.

We’ve taken the call and we have already signed contracts with a Plimus – an E-business platform that helps companies worldwide market, sell and distribute their digital goods and services securely online. This processor will be an alternative solution for those SmartHide customers, who are not able to pay via Share-it! due to some reason.

Right now we are in the process of setting up our account and integrating our scripts with Plimus. There will be an official announce on SmartHide Website and Community Forums as soon as we are ready to accept the payments. I just wanted for you, our blog readers, to be the first who hear about this benefit we are about to offer.

Stay with SmartHide Community!

Today we are offering our customers the opportunity to use a variety of servers all over the world to maintain privacy in the net and receive the protection from the unauthorized access to personal data. One of the key directions in this field is the development of Personal IP technology. The given technology possesses a range of advantages in comparison to the usage of regular SmartHide server. Let’s take a closer look at these advantages.

1) Increased security level

One of the main advantages is that a user is assigned with a unique IP address accessible only to him/her. Due to this fact it becomes possible to increase the security level in the systems which utilize the function of “user assignment based on IP”. The essence of the function is that a user can link his account in any service to his personal IP which, in its turn, will prevent other people from accessing the account. In case if Personal IP is used in SmartHide you may rest assured that no one will access your IP. This definitely increases the general security level while using many Internet services.

2) Internet services accessibility

The usage of Personal IP considerably increases the accessibility of many Internet resources. Let’s analyze several examples below.

Internet forums

If you use regular servers for SmartHide connection the following situation may occur. Some of the Internet forums may block your account because of the forum internal rules violation, though you personally did not violate any rules. The fact is that lots of users connect through regular SmartHide servers and all of them have one and the same IP. Some of the users may naturally avoid the observance of the forum rules and regulations and as a result of the repeated violations such users may be banned from the forum based on the IP. In this case the rest of the customers, using the server which IP was banned, cannot gain the complete access to the given resource.

With the Personal IP such a situation does not occur at all – your IP address belongs to you only.

Fixed IP in any spot of the planet

If you are a frequent traveler you know for sure how cumbersome it is to change your IP address regularly. The same Internet services may become inaccessible for you because of the IP link. However using your Personal IP you have a fixed IP address no matter in what part of the world you are now. All you have to do is just launch SmartHide.

Access to file sharing services

Many of us, at least once in a life, download files from special services like  HYPERLINK “http://rapidshare.de” http://rapidshare.de. Lots of the users do not use such resources frequently and there is no sense to create a paid account there. However, a free account has a range of limitations, one of them is the volume of the downloaded info through one IP address. If you are connected to a regular SmartHide service, with high probability there may be other users downloading files from the site you need and you will not have the opportunity to use this service in the nearest future. With Personal IP this problem is also solved because your IP in SmartHide is unique and belongs to you only.

3) Settings flexibility

Personal IP Subscription offers a variety of additional opportunities one of which is the settings flexibility.

Port Forwarding

Port Forwarding is a technology allowing to address a computer in the local network behind the router, using NAT (NAPT) from the Internet. The access is performed by means of the traffic redirection of certain ports from the external router address to the address of the selected computer in a local network.

Such a redirection is necessary if you, for example, use peering networks or if you want to arrange a server with Internet access on a local computer. The redirection is also sometimes required for multi-user games.

Personal IP Subscription allows to use port forwarding in any spot of the world, provider independently. Port forwarding operates successfully even if your ISP does not support such an option.

High speed

While using Personal IP our customers enjoy higher speed of the Internet connection. We assign a limited number of users to the channel with the fixed bandwidth, thus avoiding the channel overload and, as the result, the connection speed decrease for our customers. In case with regular servers the amount of users connecting to one and the same server is not limited. This may lead to the loss of speed for users in the Net.

Functionality extension

On the basis of Personal IP Subscription we plan to introduce lots of additional useful services increasing the security level of our customers, using Personal IP. This is one of the main directions that we are working on at the moment and we do hope that it will offer considerable benefits for our customers.

At the moment you can choose among few available Arovax SmartHide Personal Subscriptions. Please visit SmartHide Register page for more details>>>