Introduction:

A handful of other people have written reviews and opinions of Relakks.com - but none of these articles addressed any of the questions I had regarding setup and performance.

I first heard about Relakks.com the way most people did - when the Swedish Piratpartiet sent out a press release on August 14, 2006, announcing Relakks.com:

... a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a "darknet". The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

The Relakks.com site subsequently received an avalanche of coverage from places like Digg, BBC news, Slashdot, and Wired. All signs pointed to their service being slammed for a while, so I made a note to come back in a month and evaluate the service. Hence, this writeup was completed in October 2006, almost two full months after Relakks.com opened for business.

Update, Summer 2008 Relakks has apparently gone completely to hell. I can still connect and pull 150-200k, but I can't renew my account which is about to expire in a week - every time I try and do so, I get: Our payment methods are being looked over, it is therefore impossible to pay for the service. We apologize for any inconvenience. Some quick Googling brings up this and this, but there's no reason or resolution. Also, any messages to support@relakks.com bounce. Do you hear me, Relakks? What the hell is going on? Update, Summer 2007 The first version of this article was written in the Fall of 2006. Since the, there have been a few changes at Relakks that are worth noting: Relakks.com has dumped L2TP support completely, and now uses PPTP only Relakks.com now accepts Paypal A fix for the problem I noted re: Mac connectivity has been posted. Relakks.com got some nice coverage in the International Herald Tribune A new product offering - called "country shifting" - is in the works. It is worth noting that the IHT article gives us the only glimpse into Relakk's size, in that "...the company now has more than 50,000 subscribers..." I will try and note these changes inside my article to help keep it up-to-date. -bhance, 06.09.2007 Just a quick Youtube update for 2008 For demonstration purposes, here's a quick Youtube video that explains Relakks in the most basic, straightforward method possible. This video quickly explains the concept and shows a quick how-to for PPTP setup on Windows XP. I set up the Relakks VPN, connect to Relakks, and show how doing to changes the user's IP address.

A plain-english description of what Relakks.com does

A) A secure, rentable VPN connection originating in Sweden
B) Certain assurances with respect to their data retention policies and legal protections as a Swedish business.

Part 1: Means that when someone uses Relakks.com, for all intents and purposes their internet traffic originates from Sweden - and there is no (easy) way to track that person's connection back to the originating country or ISP. The Relakks.com VPN literally re-routes all of the client's traffic through Sweden, effectively 'hiding' your internet connection behind a Relakks.com IP address.

Part 2: Means that, should someone come looking for that Relakks.com user - (perhaps bearing search warrants) - there are legal protections greater than or equal to the protections offered to that person in their home country. Hopefully, this would protect their identity from being revealed to that third party. I examing this idea further in part 6, "How secure is Relakks.com?"

The how-to of Part 1 is what I examine in this article. I cover some of the legal ramifications of Part 2 later on, but as far as I know, the legalities of Part 2 haven't been tested in any court yet.