NordVPN sued by Torguard for blackmail [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: NordVPN sued by Torguard for blackmail [pdf]

#91

Post by dewey » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 4:11 PM UTC

penagwin wrote: post #59

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I told you that a lot of these "VPN providers" were shell companies built to explicitly facilitate access and tools for crime / espionage with the premise of having users there as cover.

Oh trust me, I'm well aware of "VPN providers". Just checkout luminati.io . See how they offer an SDK so "You can offer the user a choice between advertisements or a bit of background data usage"? I asked, and they are only interested in partners with 100k active users a month. Right, like a legitimate company with that many users is going to use luminati. Or oxylabs.io who I think owns luminati? I'm also aware that…

Oxylabs and Luminati are competitors. They don’t own them.

Re: NordVPN sued by Torguard for blackmail [pdf]

#92

Post by larkeith » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

dontbenebby wrote: post #83

cyberpunk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the parent pdf vs Nord's response [0] I'm slightly more inclined to believe Nords version of events here... 0: https://nordvpn.com/blog/torguard-lawsuit/

I always was a little sketched out by Torguard... much like how Wikileaks piggybacked on Wikipedia, the fact they put "Tor" in their name despite not being affiliated with Tor squicked me out a bit.

Note that Wikileaks was originally a wiki, though the name may have also intentionally echoed Wikimedia projects.

Re: NordVPN sued by Torguard for blackmail [pdf]

#93

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

xoa wrote: post #70

jimbokun wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone recommend another VPN provider, than Nord or Torguard? Main use case is for using public WiFi when travelling.

> Main use case is for using public WiFi when travelling Your own VPN is the correct answer. If you have a fast enough symmetric link at home then just run a small machine there (or your router/sec appliance may support it) or else get a ~$5 VPS from OVH/DigitalOcean/Scaleway/Amazon/Google/MS or whomever you like and run WireGuard on it. Or if you want something more turnkey with IKEv2 support (if you have devices th…

[deleted]

Re: NordVPN sued by Torguard for blackmail [pdf]

#94

Post by penagwin » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

LinuxBender wrote: post #68

penagwin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh trust me, I'm well aware of "VPN providers". Just checkout luminati.io . See how they offer an SDK so "You can offer the user a choice between advertisements or a bit of background data usage"? I asked, and they are only interested in partners with 100k active users a month. Right, like a legitimate company with that many users is going to use luminati. Or oxylabs.io who I think owns luminati? I'm also aware that…

+1 on ssh + vps. People will say it isn't as anonymous as the shared vpn's and while that is somewhat true, it is still more than sufficient to remove your home IP from logs. Short of scary letters and warrants to the VPS provider, people won't really know who you are. You can also automate the rebuilding of proxy nodes to get new IP's, as most VPS providers have an API for automated rebuilds.

Exactly this.

For non-state actors my "data" is gone. You'd need a warrant to get data from my VPS provider, so for most of the common threats I'm pretty anonymous to non-state actors.

Maybe you don't want your employer to see everything you search? Interestingly for programmers the ssh-tunnel is perfectly explainable, especially if you do most of your browsing in the clearnet, and only some over your ssh-tunnel.

If your threat model includes state actors (doing something illegal hmmmm?) then I would recommend doing something a bit different, but for what most people are using services like Nord for ssh + vps should be fine.

EDIT: If yall are torrenting then just get a 10$/mo seedbox, you'll thank me later.

Re: NordVPN sued by Torguard for blackmail [pdf]

#95

Post by larkeith » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

penagwin wrote: post #45

cyberpunk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the parent pdf vs Nord's response [0] I'm slightly more inclined to believe Nords version of events here... 0: https://nordvpn.com/blog/torguard-lawsuit/

I'm not sure, their response could be fabricated too. I'm interested in if Torguard has any evidence of them physically approaching their employee. > Within an hour of this in-person and unannounced visit, the same TorGuard contractor received unsolicited correspondence from an employee at NordVPN. This correspondence stated that NordVPN had received certain of TorGuard’s confidential and trade secret information and…

Regarding the DDoS part, the claim seems to be that the attacks were based on the secret information NordVPN possessed:

"35. The DDoS attacks directed against TorGuard were based upon the Information— the nature and way they occurred and were timed made it patently obvious that the attacker had obtained the Information from Collective 7 and was utilizing it as a roadmap for DDoS attacks."

Re: NordVPN sued by Torguard for blackmail [pdf]

#96

Post by Tomspark » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 4:25 PM UTC

Hey guys, Tom Spark here. I'm the video content creator that caused this whole thing. NordVPN hates my channel since I critique and criticize them a lot. They want to censor my channel to remove the bad reviews and so forth (ironic from a VPN company that is suppose to prevent censorship no?). To date, NordVPN is one of the lowest rated VPNs on my VPN tier list at http://vpntierlist.com/.

They are also in the news a lot for various things and I make sure to cover it whereas other VPN affiliates don't (most VPN affiliates are aligned with 100% based comission VPNs like Nord).

I summarized the entire story with 3 videos if anyone wants the full story. Or the latest take on Nord's blog post here (which I believe to be complete bull) :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icD3Bva7xtY

Re: NordVPN sued by Torguard for blackmail [pdf]

#97

Post by robertthebruce » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 4:36 PM UTC

skippybobby wrote: post #74

You can clearly see that TG include stuff about Nord that aint related to the lawsuit, nor to the court itself, and thats clearly why - to make Nord look bad guys in this scenario, while all the claims sounds like bs. Torguard hasn’t even filled in the correct company name when they filed the suit first, which speaks for itself on how professional they are. Anyhow, how is that Nord the bad guy now and everyone forget…

And how do you know the Micfo IP fraud is not related to NordVPN? They were using them extensively.

Collective Seven (C7) is related to a very long list of VPNs, including Nord, yet NordVPN has denied knowing them.

> Anyhow, how is that Nord the bad guy now and everyone forgets the fact that they just wanted to let torguard know about their own vulnerability to fix?

It looks bad because they tried to force censorship in exchange for a non vulnerability. Torguard has a bounty program but instead Nord sent someone to the Torguard employee's house and tried to intimidate them into silencing a Youtuber.

It appears Nord knew what they had was not a vulnerability but still wanted use it as leverage for taking down the Youtuber's videos. This is censorship at it's worst.

Re: NordVPN sued by Torguard for blackmail [pdf]

#98

Post by robertthebruce » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #9

> Collective 7 is a Canadian hosting company [...] now owned or controlled by NordVPN. [...] > NordVPN threatened to release TorGuard’s confidential and trade secret information that was obtained by NordVPN from Collective 7— who, in turn, obtained this information during the time TorGuard utilized Collective 7 as a service provider. NordVPN threatened to release this information unless TorGuard forced or coerced a t…

> If true this reflects very poorly on NordVPN. How much criticism did they manage to suppress successfully until someone sued for blackmail?

NordVPN has sent legal threats to many Youtubers and bloggers anytime they don't like what's written.

NordVPN and ProtonVPN are enemies of free speech and open internet.

Re: NordVPN sued by Torguard for blackmail [pdf]

#99

Post by safeplanet-fesa » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

UpperBodyEimi wrote: post #64

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #15

Just a friendly reminder to the world that NordVPN is also the one that lies about being based in Panama :).

Where are they based?

Likely, in Lithuania, where they are subject to data retention laws, which means they are obliged to keep data for 6 month. I can suggest to search for "NordVPN Tesonet", the scandal that happened a year ago or so. The data mining possibility is horrible on its own, but Reddit and Hacker News users have discovered much more on the way. Everything is already said and exposed, hard to believe how much influence in general media they have that they could bury the whole story.

Re: NordVPN sued by Torguard for blackmail [pdf]

#100

Post by krn » Tue, Jun 04, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

BanazirGalbasi wrote: post #81

fao_ wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take two seconds to read the responses to that link, the claims made in the post are almost entirely baseless.

The OP here is a co-founder of PIA, and IIRC he was behind a lot of the ProtonVPN and NordVPN controversy that is being cited in the link he provided. So basically, he's providing proof that he created a year ago.

> So basically, he's providing proof that he created a year ago.

I was able fact-check his claims, since I am from the city where Tesonet is based, and found none of them to be completely false or baseless. It turned out to be an open secret in the local tech community[1].

[1] https://i0.wp.com/vpnscam.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/201...