Pragmatic experience with Freegate, Ultrasurf, and Polarity privacy-related web-surfing tools

[Arlen Holder]

Do you have actual practical experience or known verifiable knowledge
to share about these supposedly "privacy related" web-surfing related
tools?

1. Freegate (reputed) anti-censorship web proxy
2. Ultrasurf (reputed) privacy security freedom
3. Polarity (reputed) private surfing

Please respond only if you have actual practical experience or knowledge.
(HINT: It's ok if nobody knows anything about these tools - I'll figure it
out on my own over time - the question is to combine tribal knowledge.)

REFERENCE LINKS BELOW:
1. http://us.dongtaiwang.com/loc/download_en.php
2. http://www.ultrasurf.us/download/u.zip
3. https://sourceforge.net/projects/polaritybrowser/files/

If you have practical experience, or actual knowledge (instead of arbitrary
guesses that we all already know about), please edify us all.

(Otherwise, it's just fine if nobody has any experience with them ... as
I'll learn on my own anyway - and if I learn something useful - I'll post
back for the benefit of the team.)

--
NOTE: If you have no experience with these tools, there's no need to add
worthless xenophobic "keyword-based guesses" since we can all easily guess
the same basic stuff given the same basic keywords (unless you have some
sort of omnipotent insight that nobody else can possibly imagine).

[JJ]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2018 16:19:09 -0000 (UTC), Arlen Holder wrote:
>
> 1. Freegate (reputed) anti-censorship web proxy

I tried this years ago. At that time I don't like it because when it's
actived, it changes the system proxy setting which is already used for other
proxy. There's no setting to change that behaviour, and other things which
are not preferred. Now it's quite a bit better. Most of the things are
configurable. There are a view things left which I don't like:

- The application EXE file is obfuscated by unknown EXE packer/encrypter, so
it's difficult to know the honesty of the software.

- My firewall detects that it does DNS lookup directly to Google DNS, rather
than using the DNS servers which were configured on the system. I don't use
Google DNS or any standard DNS. I use DNSCrypt.

> 2. Ultrasurf (reputed) privacy security freedom

This is new to me. After testing it, I found out that it's pretty similar to
FreeGate. In general, it's a decent proxy, but it still has disadvantages
similar to what FreeGate has. Some of the notable things:

- Network connections to the remote proxy server (the proxy client) is
handled by two other instances of itself, instead of just the main instance.
So, there'll be 3 "u.exe" processes. There should be no reason to spawn
another instances of itself to do other tasks unless they're frequently
crash.

- This one is a surprise. The main instance of the application always tries
to download "u.exe" file when the application starts, and use that to spawn
the proxy client processes, instead of existing one which is already in the
computer. Turns out that the downloaded "u.exe" file is actually different
than the "u.exe" of the main application. This different "u.exe" can be used
to efficiently spy users, since it always get updated.

> 3. Polarity (reputed) private surfing

This is also new to me. It's a WebKit-Trident combo web browser. But in
terms of functionality, IMO, it's just a normal web browser without any
clear aim in mind. It doesn't have any built in predefined proxy like Tor
Browser, Brave, and Opera Blink either (which is ready to use).

IMO, Polarity is still not yet ready for daily use. There are actually
several significant problems with it (at least on my Windows 7):

- The portable version won't even run (with useless "Unexpected error" error
message). Only the installer version is runnable.

- It still tries to connect to a server even though the auto update is
disabled, and ad blocking and web filter are already disabled (assuming that
they use an updatable database).

- All browser settings completely fails to be saved.

- The uninstaller also completely fails to to do its job. I have to manually
delete the folders and files, including the software uninstall entry on
application list of the Programs and Features control panel.

[Arlen Holder]

On 2 Aug 2018 15:57:12 GMT, JJ wrote:

> I tried this years ago.

Wow. I was almost certain nobody would have any experience to share, so,
I'm humbled and very happy that your experiences are well worth sharing!

Thank you for adding value!

> At that time I don't like it because when it's
> actived, it changes the system proxy setting which is already used for other
> proxy. There's no setting to change that behaviour, and other things which
> are not preferred. Now it's quite a bit better. Most of the things are
> configurable. There are a view things left which I don't like:

I agree with you of the three tools, this one seems to work best. In my
case, it brought up an Internet Explorer (which isn't my default) so it
must be hard coded in the software (I think).

The whatismyipaddress did reveal a spoofed IP address though, which is part
of the point of using it. A curl of icanhazip didn't though.

> - My firewall detects that it does DNS lookup directly to Google DNS, rather
> than using the DNS servers which were configured on the system. I don't use
> Google DNS or any standard DNS. I use DNSCrypt.

Thanks for explaining this anomaly, where Windows firewall asked me to let
it through. That must be why.

It seems to be aimed for "china only", but it seemed to work in the USA
where I am.

>> 2. Ultrasurf (reputed) privacy security freedom
>
> This is new to me. After testing it, I found out that it's pretty similar to
> FreeGate. In general, it's a decent proxy, but it still has disadvantages
> similar to what FreeGate has. Some of the notable things:

Again, very good input! Thanks for increasing our combined knowledge far
more than I could have done so!

I tried all three tools before I posted, where your observations are far
more detailed than mine were!

For me, this also brought up IE (where IE is not my default browser).

> - This one is a surprise. The main instance of the application always tries

> to download "u.exe" file...

I hadn't noticed that anomaly, so thanks for pointing it out.

>> 3. Polarity (reputed) private surfing

I agree with you that Polarity doesn't seem to have a well defined niche.

> It doesn't have any built in predefined proxy like Tor
> Browser, Brave, and Opera Blink either (which is ready to use).

I didn't know about Brave or Blink, but I knew about:
1. TBB <https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en>
2. Epic privacy browser <https://www.epicbrowser.com/>
3. Opera VPN browser <https://www.opera.com/computer/features/free-vpn>

4. Brave <https://brave.com/download/>
5. Opera Blink <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_%28web_engine%29>
<https://iopq.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/why-opera-switching-to-blink-webkit-was-the-blunder-of-a-century/>

BTW, supposedly if you clear all cookies, then reputedly Opera will give
you a new unique SurfEasy VPN "registration ID" the next time you connect.
opera://settings/clearBrowserData

Dunno if that works for Epic to reset your unique VPN ID or not...