Alphabet Launches ‘Outline’ VPN Service For Journalists

Google has always been a friend to journalists. Now, the company is proving its loyalty with an open-source tool that grants news organizations safer access to the Internet.
Developed by Alphabet-owned think tank Jigsaw (formerly Google Ideas), virtual private network Outline lets users directly own and operate their server—no third-party trust necessary.

The VPN was designed for everyone—from the office luddite to most liberated geek—with a simple setup, strong encryption, and auto-updating servers.
“Journalists need safe access to information to research issues, communicate with sources, and report the news,” Jigsaw product manager Santiago Andrigo wrote in a blog announcement.
A virtual private network encrypts Internet traffic by bouncing it through a remote server. But while it may shield you from the prying eyes of your Internet service provider, users are still at the mercy of whoever controls the VPN.

With the exception of Outline.

Outline Manager lets you can create a server and share access with unlimited accounts (via Jigsaw)

“Much of Jigsaw’s work involves defending news organizations from digital threats that try to block access to information,” Andrigo wrote. “We created Outline because news organizations need reliable, private Internet access to make information accessible and meaningful for their reads.
“That’s a mission we share with the news industry,” he continued. “And a more informed world starts with access to information.”

Plus, retaining your own server makes it easy to control traffic and maintain Internet speeds.
(For the technically inclined: Outline supports modern AEAD 256-bit cipher encryption and is resistant to probing and stronger against protocol fingerprinting, “which makes it significantly harder to block by modern deep-packet-inspection software.”)
Windows, Android, Chrome OS, and Linux users can sign up online for Outline Manager: Use your own infrastructure or a cloud provider to create a server and share access with unlimited accounts.

Still, an early-stage product, Jigsaw expects to release versions of Outline for Apple’s macOS and iOS platforms “soon.”

For more, see Geek sister site PCMag’s lineup of The Best VPN Services of 2018, as well as How to Set Up and Use a VPN.

How to find out everything that Facebook knows about you

Unless you’ve been living under the digital version of a rock then you’re perhaps aware how Facebook finds itself in the eye of a major storm. So much so that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted the mistake on the company's part and apologized for the way it handled data belonging to 50 million users.

The backlash of the latest controversy has perhaps been unprecedented. #DeleteFacebook was amongst the top trends worldwide on Twitter.

Deleting your Facebook account, however, remains a personal and subjective decision. What one can do although is be more aware about what all Facebook actually knows about you. Here is how you can check all that Facebook knows about you.

There are two aspects to this. First, the information that Facebook keeps on the basis of which it shows you those pesky ads. The second aspect is what all your timeline activities -- every post shared, photo uploaded, message sent, item clicked on.

To find out about the first aspect, here’s what you need to do:

* Log on to Facebook

* Go to Settings

* Click on ads

* Here you will find a sub-head of 'Your interests' which includes 'Hobbies and activities', 'News and entertainment' pages you follow, apps you have downloaded and so on.

* Scroll down and you will see 'Your information' where there is profile about you, which Facebook shares with advertisers.

* It will include information like when you last travelled, which device is used to access Facebook etc.
* Facebook allows users to strike out any information they find irrelevant or incorrect, but doesn't reveal whether it removes this information from your profile.

While this is your Facebook profile's information shared with advertisers, there is a lot more that Facebook knows about you, which is the second aspect of this story. Facebook has an option to allow users to download all the data it has about you in one go.

* Open Settings

* Click on 'Download a copy of your Facebook data'

* Click the “Start My Archive” button

* Enter your password

After this, you will receive an e-mail from Facebook stating your archive is ready for downloading. When the e-mail arrives, click on the link and then click the “Download” button on the page that opens. All the information will be in .ZIP file format. These ZIP files may be hard to access but you can double click on index.htm file to access all the information together.

You will find different sections such as Photos, Videos, Friends, Messages, Ads and more -- pretty much everything that you have ever told Facebook.

So, if after seeing that Facebook basically knows almost everything about you, you might get a bit alarmed or remain completely indifferent. If you’re in the first category, then go ahead and join the #DeleteFacebook movement. But if you’re in the indifferent category, carry on liking, sharing and posting.