Starting Tomorrow, 1st January 2015, the way VAT is calculated for our European Union located customers will change. Until now we had to add 21% VAT to all EU customers as the VAT rate in Czech Republic, where our company is registered and located is 21%.

In 2015 this will change, however. The VAT will be based on the standard VAT rate in the country of the customer, as selected in the order form. For most customers the difference will be negligible, although customers in the more “socialistic” countries will have to pay more.

Please keep in mind this change is required by new EU laws and we hate it as much as any other EU merchant as it adds significant complexity to already complicated tax laws.

Standard VAT rates in EU countries (plus Monaco which shares EU VAT laws with France) are as below:

Austria          20%
Belgium          21%
Bulgaria          20%
Croatia            25%
Cyprus          19%
Czech Republic         21%
Denmark          25%
Estonia          20%
Finland          24%
France          20%
Germany          19%
Greece          23%
Hungary          27%
Ireland          23%
Italy              22%
Latvia          21%
Lithuania          21%
Luxembourg          15%
Malta              18%
Monaco (French VAT)    20%
Netherlands          21%
Poland          23%
Portugal          23%
Romania          24%
Slovakia          20%
Slovenia          22%
Spain              21%
Sweden          25%
United Kingdom        20%

We are currently experiencing technical issues with our FR5 server. The datacenter has been already notified so far we have no details about the issue. We expect the server to be back online in less than 48 hours.

I apologize for the inconvenience, please connect via one of our many other servers if possible.

UPDATE, December 30: The FR5 server had its main hard drive replaced and had to be reinstalled completely. It is now back online again. I apologize for the delay.

Earlier Today some customers reported a problem when launching their Identity Cloaker application on Windows PCs. “Invalid CRL” error message appeared during the launch. We have been able to fix the bug and a new version of Identity Cloaker is now available in the member area.

You can also use this download link directly:

http://www.identitycloaker.com/download/IDC2_Setup.exe

The new version number is 2.0.47 . While this bug does not seem to affect every user, we suggest you update to the newest version anyway.

I apologize for the inconvenience. Please also note that this issue does not affect Identity Cloaker Portable or Identity Cloaker for OS X.

UPDATE: It seems the OS X version is affected as well, although with a different error message. We are investigating the issue already, please bear with us in the meanwhile. The OS X version is now working again. If you still get “Connection to main server failed” error with your OS X version, please contact our helpdesk. Also, make sure you are using this latest OS X version:

http://www.identitycloaker.com/download/osx/IdentityCloaker-0.5.6-osx-installer.app.dmg

The standard Identity Cloaker client application has been updated Yesterday. The update is not mandatory, however, and if your current version of the client application is working as expected, you do not need to update. The new version includes mostly bug fixes.

Also, if you are using Identity Cloaker Portable or Identity Cloaker for OS X, the above information does not apply.

The main server was offline for approximately 2 hours Today due to emergency maintenance. The datacenter technicians had to replace the main board. Everything should be working properly now. I apologize for the inconvenience.

We are taking steps to avoid similar problems in the future.

This is just a quick note that a new Maidenhead, United Kingdom located server, UK14, has just been added to our network. You can connect to it either via our Identity Cloaker application(s), OpenVPN, L2TP over IPSec or PPTP VPN.

If you experience any issues with the new server, please contact our customer support.

A new server located in Madrid, Spain has been recently added to our network. The ES1 server is now accessible both via our Identity Cloaker application, as well as via OpenVPN and “L2TP over IPSec” VPN on multiple devices. The setup is the same as for our other servers.

If you experience any performance or reliability issues with the new server, please do not hesitate and contact our customer support.

In addition to the recently found Heartbleed bug we posted about 2 months ago, new multiple vulnerabilities have been found in the OpenSSL libraries. OpenSSL vulnerability may potentially affect our OpenVPN service, while it does not in any way limit our encrypted proxy server service.

All of our servers have been patched earlier Today, virtually hours after the fix has become available. Please rest assured that Identity Cloaker is currently operating at 100%.

NOTE: You may read more about the recent SSL vulnerabilities at:

http://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140605.txt

Some customers contacted us Yesterday regarding the recently found “Heartbleed Bug” which compromises SSL encryption. For details on this dangerous bug, please read:

http://heartbleed.com

All of our servers are now using OpenSSL versions that are *not* affected by the Heartbleed bug. 90% of our servers are running CentOS 5.x with OpenSSL 0.9.8 which has never been affected and only a few servers are running CentOS 6.x. Updated version of the OpenSSL library with workaround patch was already applied Yesterday.

Also, please note that only OpenVPN uses SSL, our standard encrypted proxy servers as well as “L2TP over IPSec” VPN (uses mostly by our iPhone/iPad/OS X and some Android customers) have never been affected by this bug.

An interesting fact to mention is that if you were using Identity Cloaker in the encrypted mode, or connected via VPN and visited an SSL enabled website, the connection was, of course, encrypted by SSH (if using our encrypted proxy servers) or via VPN, which means the potential attacker was not able to take advantage of the Heartbleed bug.

Basically, you were adding another layer of encryption to the (possibly vulnerable) SSL encryption.

Due to increasing demand, we will be adding servers in these new locations:

Czech Republic
Spain

And hopefully also Finland.

New server locations are expected to be available within the next 7-14 days.

If you want servers in more locations, please contact our customer support and we will try to get servers in those countries too.