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Internet privacy

iCloak plugs in to protect privacy, but it's buggy

Edward C. Baig
USA TODAY
The iCloak USB stick promises to protect your online anonymity.

NEW YORK—Malicious hackers. Security breaches. Stolen passwords. It’s scary stuff. But would you even know if your own computer had been compromised?

Eric B. Delisle says most people haven’t a clue.

Delisle’s remedy was to come up with iCloak Stik, a small USB flash drive that when you plug it into a PC or Mac, promises to make browsing on that computer anonymous and secure. He says it gives ordinary folks the same levels of privacy and security that hackers and governments can take advantage of.

iCloak costs $99 with a year of free upgrades, or $149 with a lifetime of free upgrades.

The product was funded on Kickstarter in 2014, but is only now coming out of beta.

It may have benefited by staying there a bit longer, given the one significant bug I found while trying, unsuccessfully, to launch iCloak onto a brand new iMac.

Fortunately, I was able to use the stick on an older iMac, a MacBook Air and a Dell laptop. A closer look:

*How it works: iCloak installs its own operating system onto whichever computer that you plug it into, but only does so for that given computing session. Indeed, you’re not typically going to keep iCloak plugged in all the time. You can carry it on a keychain and only summon it as needed.

Delisle, whose own privacy sensibilities align with Edward Snowden’s, says why you use it is completely subjective. “It’s not up to me what you choose to keep private,” he says. The company will let buyers pay by cash or Bitcoin.

You can plug iCloak into your own computer, a friend’s PC, a machine at the office, or even one out in public. And when you remove the USB, it is as if you were never there.

iCloak doesn’t store anything on the computer’s hard drive, which protects you from keystroke loggers and other malware. And nothing is automatically saved onto the iCloak drive either, so even if the bad guys managed to download some wicked files onto the stick, it'd be gone the next time you plug in. That said, there is a dedicated folder on the stick where you can actively stash your own files. iCloak gives you about 12GB of available storage.

This tiny stick plugs into USB.

*What the environment is like. It’s important to keep in mind that when you plug in the USB stick you’re exiting the friendly and familiar confines of your own operating system. That means on a Mac you won’t be patrolling OS X. And on a PC you won’t be navigating Windows. (iCloak works on Linux machines too but doesn’t work on most Chromebooks.)

On a Mac you boot up and choose your operating system by pressing down the “option” key when you first power on. On a PC, the dedicated boot key varies.

When you boot up into the iCloak environment you find yourself in geeky territory.

Inside is not one but two Web browsers. There’s a version of Firefox in which you don’t browse anonymously. It has all the media plug-ins and is provided for those sites you visit where you don’t mind if your computer’s address can be identified.

For the really hush-hush stuff there’s a special browser that transports you through the so-called Tor network. Encryption is applied, your anonymity is preserved, and the routes you take to get to your cyber-destinations are concealed.

When I used the Tor browser to visit various financial institutions, I was asked the security questions at those places required to verify my identity—that is proper and the way things are supposed to work. And in the case of one bank I visited online I had to call a phone number before I could proceed.

iCloak supplies a word processor, text editor, spreadsheet, and file manager onto the stick so you don’t necessarily have to boot back up into Windows or OS X to get some work done. There’s also an integrated password manager.

*The snags. While Delisle’s intention was to simplify all this, iCloak needs more polish. The interface isn’t pretty. Logging on can be slow. And you stumble on a lot of jargon. For example, when I was connecting to the Tor network, a status message read: “Bootstrapped 25%. Loading networkstatus (sic) consensus.” And when I tried playing a video at the USA TODAY site inside the Tor browser, I got a “bad gateway” error message.

Connecting to Wi-Fi was also poky and confusing, and I never could tap into the Wi-Fi network at my office. I turned to a MiFi connection instead.

The most serious issue had to do with a new iMac. After trying to boot up into the iCloak environment, I couldn’t get the mouse, computer keyboard, or trackpad on the iMac to get recognized. The company is now working on a patch to fix the problem.

Safeguarding online privacy and security is serious business. But until the bugs are squashed and things runs more smoothly I can’t recommend iCloak to the average person.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter

The bottom line

iCloak Stick

$99 or $149, www.icloak.me

Pro. Can protect your privacy and anonymity when you are online. Works with PCs and Macs.

Con. Buggy. Didn’t work with latest iMac. Needs polish.

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