SAN FRANCISCO, CA — At this week's Macworld Expo, Cloak announced the release (previously in public beta) of their Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution for both iOS and OS X. Dave Peck, Founder, gave us an overview of the benefits of their product.
Everyone loves public Wi-Fi access, be it through your ISP, or available in coffee shops, restaurants, libraries and other locations. The problem is that, with few exceptions, this access is made without providing a password, which means that your network traffic can potentially be viewed by tools such as FireSheep or a network analyzer such as Wireshark.
Cloak Network Preferences
While both iOS and OS X have provisions to configure a VPN, this involves defining VPN protocols, creating and importing certificates and configuration profiles, and other operations that can get complicated. Cloak literally makes this a single button operation. Once you install the app (on OS X) or import your configuration profile (on iOS) you then make a single menu choice to enable the VPN.
The Cloak VPN offers a number of benefits. The first of course is that your network data is now encrypted, so sensitive information can't be seen by others on the network. The next is that you are part of Cloak's global network, which can make you appear to be coming from another location, and access many services and sites that are otherwise blocked. Cloak also offers a feature called OverCloak, which will protect your system during the brief time your system is establishing a secure connection and may be vulnerable to attack.
Cloak is available now. You can start with a 30-day trial and see if it's right for you. After that, there are currently two plans, a basic plan for $7.99/month with 20 GB of data, and a pro plan for $14.99/month with 50 GB of data.