American Expatriates in the Middle East

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Why Americans move to the Middle East?

Low taxes?

cheaper cost of living ?

“A Western expat in Saudi Arabia is paid on average six per cent more than an Arab expat and almost 30 per cent more than an Asian one. Westerners sit top of the tree in all Gulf countries, while Asian expats are the lowest paid across the region.”

Today there are more than 100,000 American expats living and working in the Gulf Countries. American workers are at a premium at this job market. The economic climate is perfect for young professionals who want to see the world and make enough money to pay back student loan debts.

Where do American Expats live in the Middle East?

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The most popular destination is Israel with about 80,000 of expats.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE are also very popular destinations.

What do expats do in the Middle East?

83% of American expats work in the private sector (most in the energy industry)

The most popular job for expats include: accountant, manager, engineer, executive, coordinator, and civil engineer.

98% of expats in Saudi Arabia claim to have more disposable income than they did working in their country of origin.

92% of expats in Qatar say they have more money left over at the end of the month than they did working in their home country.

94% of expats in the UAE say they pay less in taxes than they did in their country of origin.

And of course, mostly all of them are missing their native America.

Hulu, Netflix and others favorite things are not available in the Middle East.

The only reasonable solution is using VPN for Expats!

It lets to access blocked sites and services and feel like at home!

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Which VPN Protocol is the best? PPTP vs. OpenVPN vs. L2TP/IPsec vs. SSTP

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PPTP VPN Protocol

Point-to-point tunneling protocol is common and easy to set up. PPTP clients are built into many platforms, including Windows. It is said that this type of vpn protocol is not very secure.

Open VPN vs PPTP VPN 

SSL or OpenVPN

OpenVPN uses open-source technologies like the OpenSSL encryption library and SSL v3/TLS v1 protocols. It can be configured to run on any port, so you could configure a server to work over TCP port 443. The OpenSSL VPN traffic would then be practically indistinguishable from standard HTTPS traffic that occurs when you connect to a secure website. This makes it difficult to block completely.

It’s very configurable, and will be most secure if it’s set to use AES encryption instead of the weaker Blowfish encryption. OpenVPN has become a popular standard. We’ve seen no serious concerns that anyone (including the NSA) has compromised OpenVPN connections.

OpenVPN support isn’t integrated into popular desktop or mobile operating systems. Connecting to an OpenVPN network requires a a third-party application — either a desktop application or a mobile app. Yes, you can even use mobile apps to connect to OpenVPN networks on Apple’s iOS.

OpenVPN is new and secure, although you will need to install a third-party application.

L2TP/IPsec

Layer 2 Tunnel Protocol is a VPN protocol that doesn’t offer any encryption. That’s why it’s usually implemented along with IPsec encryption. As it’s built into modern desktop operating systems and mobile devices, it’s fairly easy to implement. But it uses UDP port 500 — that means it can’t be disguised on another port, like OpenVPN can. It’s thus much easier to block and harder to get around firewalls with.

IPsec encryption should be secure, theoretically. There are some concerns that the NSA could have weakened the standard, but no one knows for sure. Either way, this is a slower solution than OpenVPN. The traffic must be converted into L2TP form, and then encryption added on top with IPsec. It’s a two-step process.

L2TP/IPsec is theoretically secure, but there are some concerns. It’s easy to set up, but has trouble getting around firewalls and isn’t as efficient as OpenVPN.

SSTP

Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol was introduced in Windows Vista Service Pack 1. It’s a proprietary Microsoft protocol, and is best supported on Windows. It may be more stable on Windows because it’s integrated into the operating system whereas OpenVPN isn’t — that’s the biggest potential advantage. Some support for it is available on other operating systems, but it’s nowhere near as widespread.

It can be configured to use very secure AES encryption, which is good. For Windows users, it’s certainly better than PPTP — but, as it’s a proprietary protocol, it isn’t subject to the independent audits OpenVPN is subject to. Because it uses SSL v3 like OpenVPN, it has similar abilities to bypass firewalls and should work better for this than L2TP/IPsec or PPTP.

It’s like OpenVPN, but mostly just for Windows and can’t be audited as fully.

Use Open vpn from Spider!

 

What do you know about your Internet privacy?

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Do you think you are private on-line? You will be surprised but today really big money are made in violating your privacy. Companies will pay big bucks to learn more about you, and service providers on the web are eager to get their hands on as much information about you as possible.

So what do you do? How do you keep your information out of everyone else’s hands? Here’s a guide to surfing the Interneet while keeping your privacy intact.

The adage goes,

“If you’re not paying for a service, you’re the product, not the customer,”

and it’s never been more true.

Every day more news breaks about a new company that uploads your address book to their servers, skirts in-browser privacy protection, and tracks your every move on the web to learn as much about your browsing habits and activities as possible. In this post, we’ll explain why you should care, and help you lock down your surfing so you can browse in peace.

Why You Should Care

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Your personal information is valuable. More valuable than you might think. Huge companies are ready to pay big money for information about people, their demographics, income, and habits, and then roll it up so they could get a complete picture about who you are and how to convince you to buy their products.

The real money is in taking your data and shacking up with third parties to help them come up with new ways to convince you to spend money, sign up for services, and give up more information. Relevant ads are nice, but the real value in your data exists where you won’t see it until you’re too tempted by the offer to know where it came from, whether it’s a coupon in your mailbox or a new daily deal site with incredible bargains tailored to your desires. It all sounds good until you realize the only thing you have to trade for such “exciting” bargains is everything personal about you: your age, income, families ages and income, medical history, dietary habits, favorite web sites, your birthday…the list goes on. It would be fine if you decided to give up this information for a tangible benefit, but you may never see a benefit aside from an ad, and no one’s including you in the decision.

So you must be very careful in the modern global network.

  1. Never share your personal information
  2. Stay protected in public wi-fi networks
  3. Do not save passwords
  4. Use privacy protection tools like VPN

Stay secure and private with pider VPN!

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Unblock WhatsApp in UAE safe and easy

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WhatsApp is a wonderful mobile cross-platform messenger. It allows you to exchange messages and calls without having to pay.

WhatsApp is the most popular application for communications today and it is used by millions users all over the world.

Unfortunately WhatsApp is blocked in United Arab Emirates.

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Why WhatsApp is blocked in UAE?

All call service were blocked in Dubai and other emirates because VoIP services can only be offered in the UAE by licensed providers, such as Etisalat and du.

In a press statement TRA made it clear that only licensed telecom providers have rights to provide such service (free or paid).

“VOIP SERVICES ARE STILL A PREROGATIVE OF THE LICENSED PROVIDERS WHO RESERVE THE RIGHT TO PROVIDE SUCH SERVICES THROUGH THEIR NETWORKS. COMPANIES WISHING TO OFFER SUCH SERVICES MUST CO-ORDINATE WITH THE LICENSED TELECOM PROVIDERS IN THE UAE.”

Of course, their prices are not cheap.

Below you can see the comparison of standard roaming prices.

How to Unblock WhatsApp in UAE?

So what to do if you want to unblock WhatsApp in UAE?

  1. Be sure that you are secure and safe on-line. The best solution for Internet safety is using a vpn (virtual private network)
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  2. Setup vpn connection on your device. You can use our free Android application.
  3. Save your money and enjoy free WhatsApp calls from UAE.

Let’s compare your options

Etisalat traveler packageEtisalat Sahrzad+ Free WhatsApp Calls whatsapp

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1000 min Incoming Voice Calls Unlimited Free WhatsApp calls
1 month  136 USD 1 month SpiderVPN 5 USD
100 min incoming calls Unlimited Free WhatsApp calls
1 week 27 USD 1 week SpiderVPN 3 USD
DU

Standard Roaming 

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Unlimited Free WhatsApp calls

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From 0.27 USD /minute 1 week SpiderVPN 3 USD 

So don’t waste your money – use Sahrzad service and enjoy free WhatsApp Calls from UAE!

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WhatsApp Messenger is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia and yes, those phones can all message each other!

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In addition to basic messaging WhatsApp users can create groups, send each other unlimited images, video and audio media messages.

 

Internet censorship in China

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Internet censorship in China  is one the most severe in the world. It is based on a big variety of laws and administrative regulations.

Internet limits in China are considered more extensive and more advanced than in any other country in the world. The governmental authorities not only block website content but also monitor the Internet access of individuals. This called The Great Firewall of China. Today there are about 30,000–50,000 internet police in China employed to enforce Chinese internet laws.

No unit or individual may use the Internet to create, replicate, retrieve, or transmit the following kinds of information:

  1. Inciting to resist or breaking the Constitution or laws or the implementation of administrative regulations;
  2. Inciting to overthrow the government or the socialist system;
  3. Inciting division of the country, harming national unification;
  4. Inciting hatred or discrimination among nationalities or harming the unity of the nationalities;
  5. Making falsehoods or distorting the truth, spreading rumors, destroying the order of society;
  6. Promoting feudal superstitions, sexually suggestive material, gambling, violence, murder;
  7. Terrorism or inciting others to criminal activity; openly insulting other people or distorting the truth to slander people;
  8. Injuring the reputation of state organizations;
  9. Other activities against the Constitution, laws or administrative regulations.

The most popular methods on Intenet blocking in China:

  1. IP blocking. The access to a certain IP address is denied. If the target Web site is hosted in a shared hosting server, all Web sites on the same server will be blocked.
  2. DNS filtering and redirection. The DNS doesn’t resolve domain names or returns incorrect IP addresses.
  3. URL filtering.
  4. Packet filtering

And several others methods.

Also it is known that China blocks many VPN service providers.

That is why it is better to test it before buying.

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How to open blocked sites in UAE without any software?

Dubai-Abu-Dhabi-UAE-United-Arab-EmiratesWhether you are a techie guy or not, downloading a software program can sometimes be scary. Without your knowledge, it might contain viruses that can harm your device. But there are times that you feel you are obliged to, just like when you need to access blocked sites. But no, you can still open restricted sites without using any software. There are actually many effective techniques that you can try, including VPN(Virtual Private Network). However, you need to clearly understand them first as well as their pros and cons.

Using Proxy to Open Blocked sites

The first and most common way is by using a proxy site, which acts as the third party between your computer and restricted site. There are a lot of free and paid web proxies to choose from as you browse the Internet. With a proxy server, your IP address is hidden and no one can see you as you try to open blocked sites. Generally speaking, proxy servers are fast. However, some offices and schools block these proxy sites. But more importantly, traffic is not encrypted so the safety level is not really that high. What is the difference between proxy and VPN? Read here.

Access blocked sites by ip address

Another way to access blocked sites without any software is by using its IP address, instead of its web URL. On your computer, click on Start then CMD and press Enter. On the command prompt, type ‘ping sitename.com and press Enter. There, you will then see the site’s IP address which you can copy and paste on your browser. In some cases, the site is hosted in a VPS or Dedicated Server Environment (DSE), and is using an unverified SSL. You can still proceed but your security will be at high risk.

Use shortening URL tool to open blocked sites

Using a URL shortening tool such as tinyurl.com and bitly.com can also unblock restricted sites. Instead of using the site URL directly, convert it first to another URL, usually a shorter one, and then place it on your browser. But of course, this method is not always effective because your real IP address is still exposed. This is not advisable to use if you are in a country with strict Internet censorship policy.

Using translation service

You can also use a language translation tool such as Google Translate, which also acts like a proxy.

Using VPN to access blocked sites

There are other methods to have access on restricted sites without using software, such as by using mobile browsers as proxies, or by converting your IP into a decimal IP. However, the safest way is by using a VPN. Although some of them may require you to download software, there are others that allow you to use their service without downloading or installing anything. You can actually set up your VPN yourself on your computer at home. This procedure is not very complicated.

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But why use VPN instead any of the ones mentioned above?
The quick answer is security.

Although VPNs work almost exactly like proxy sites, your data via VPN is highly encrypted. This means that you are absolutely safe, even if you are in Wi-Fi hotspot are in strict countries in the Middle East. Different VPNs also have different security protocols to choose from. And yes, there are also free VPNs. But for obvious reasons, paid VPNs are

  • Faster
  • more reliable
  • provide excellent customer service.

11 expats arrested in Kuwait for gambling

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Recently 11 foreigners were arrested by Kuwait police in the Salmiya area in the capital Kuwait City for gambling.

“The officers raided the flat after monitoring it for several days following tips about men going there for illegal activities,” a security source told Kuwaiti daily Al Rai.

“Investigations revealed that seven Asians and four Arabs were running the gambling in the flat. They were all arrested and referred to the competent authorities for legal action,” the source added.

In February last year, security officers arrested a Kuwaiti doctor for reportedly running an illegal casino in the country.

According to reports, 33 other people, including one American citizen and three European nationals, were also arrested in the raid.

The casino, believed to be the largest in the country where gambling is strictly prohibited, charged high fees.

The police raided the makeshift casino after a Kuwaiti man lost 200,000 Dinars (Dh2.60 million) and informed authorities about its existence.

Police closely monitored the area and gathered enough evidence to raid the casino and make arrests.

Police learned that the American man owned a casino in the US and that the Europeans were professionals who operated in international gambling halls.

The reports said that smaller illegal casinos had also been secretly opened in various areas of the country and that a massive raid would be launched.

Gambling is banned in Kuwait, and authorities are concerned that the trend of gambling on the Internet is growing.

Media reports in Kuwait City said a large number of young people from different nationalities are gambling through social networking sites, playing mainly Poker, Black Jack and Roulette.

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Stay Safe in the Internet with Sahrzad service!

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Reasons to use VPN in the Middle East

Politics, iPlayer and Porn

Millions of people are spending their evenings in such simple pleasures like reading news and politics websites, watching internet porn, and enjoying  the latest episode of Game of Thrones and others films on iPlayer.

It is hard to believe but these things are not available in the Arab world. Internet censorship, as well as geographical restrictions on online content are terrible in this part of the wold.

But this is not the end on Internet – it is just another day on the internet with VPN solutions.

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VPN or Virtual private networks, widespread only in the business sphere before, are very popular today among home Internet users in the Middle East: UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Pakistan, Iran.

Such networks establish a private, encrypted data connection, and allow users to sidestep local censorship rules while disguising their online identities.

For example, an internet user in Qatar or the UAE could use a VPN to access online pornography, avoiding blocks on sites imposed in many Arab countries. VPNs can also allow access to outlawed political sites, certain social media services and other blocked content.

For example, an internet user in Saudi Arabia could use a VPN service to watch TV shows on the BBC’s iPlayer service, which is only available in the UK and a handful of other countries.

Defeating censorship?

Internet censorship is rife in the Middle East. Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia were ranked as the “top 10 most censored countries” in a 2012 report by the New York based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

“Iranian authorities maintain one of the world’s toughest internet censorship regimes, blocking

Legal implications

Yet could using a VPN land you in trouble?

In a market like the UAE, the law prohibits VPNs if they are used to commit or conceal a crime, legal experts say.

“Article 9 in the UAE’s Law No.5/2012 on Combatting Cyber Crimes makes it an offense to use ‘a fraudulent computer network protocol address by using a false address or a third party address’ for the purposes of committing or concealing a crime,” said Dino Wilkinson, partner at the Norton Rose Fulbright legal practice in Abu Dhabi.

Wilkinson said that it is highly unlikely the UAE law would be construed to pursue expatriates using VPNs to access online TV services.

“I am not aware of any particular enforcement actions being taken or contemplated by authorities on this type of benign personal use,” he said.

“I think there would be a bit of uproar among expats if they were stopped from watching Eastenders or the equivalent from their home countries.”

Be aware! Top 10 Cyber Crimes in UAE

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1. Run software on a computer network or an electronic information system or any information technology medium which can cause it to stop functioning or results in crashing, deletion, omission, destruction or alteration of the programme, system, website, data or information, without authorisation.

2. Email SPAM or flooding email with messages .

3. Obtain a secret number, code or password and gain access to information technology without legal right.

4. Use a computer network or information technology system to threaten another person, force them to engage in or prevent them from engaging in a certain act.

5. Establish, manage or run a website for gambling activities, and websites that promote the collection of donations without a license accredited by the competent authority, manage or run a website or use information on a computer network with the intent to publish information, news, cartoon drawings or pictures that may endanger national security.

6. Use a computer network or any information technology system to invade the privacy of another person.

7. Eavesdrop, intercept, record, transfer or disclose conversations or audio or visual material of someone else without consent.

8. Publish photographs of others without consent.

9. Run a website promoting programmes or ideas that would prompt riots, hatred, racism or damage to the national unity.

10. Insult others or accuse them of acts that would lead to punishment or contempt by a third party online.

From Sahrzad’s Blog