PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy • Hacker News Board

Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy

#21

Post by zigzaggy » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 5:18 AM UTC

Whether this is true or not isn’t really the point. The fact that it it’s even possible is a huge red flag for my use case / threat model.

It’s relatively easy, not to mention cheap (less than $10 per month) to spin up a streisand (0) instance and protect myself that way. As long as I keep my traffic encrypted, I can keep most / all of the vultures away that I’m concerned about.

Happy to walk anyone through it. Takes less than 30 minutes and it just works.

Edited to add link. Second edit to change reference # typo.

0. https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand

Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy

#22

Post by Phylter » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 5:18 AM UTC

beilabs wrote: post #14

Disappointed. I've been with PIA for a few years now and I always recommended them and loved their support. I just cancelled my annual subscription which was due to expire in 100 days. Vote with your wallet. Any recommendations for a new VPN provider?

I just did this and added the reason why. They very quickly emailed me a canned response to this issue. Apparently it's a big deal and lots of people are leaving.

Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy

#23

Post by extesy » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 5:19 AM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #12

godzillabrennus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their ios support isn’t great. I’m using ExpressVPN and while they cost more (as much as 3 times as these budget services) they so far seem to offer a fast product. You can also sign up with crypto currency if you want.

> You can also sign up with crypto currency if you want. But can you renew with Bitcoin etc?

There is no difference between singing up and renewing. It's just a balance on some anonymous account number.

Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy

#24

Post by 4AoZqrH2fsk5UB » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 5:21 AM UTC

beilabs wrote: post #14

Disappointed. I've been with PIA for a few years now and I always recommended them and loved their support. I just cancelled my annual subscription which was due to expire in 100 days. Vote with your wallet. Any recommendations for a new VPN provider?

I've been using ProtonVPN for a while. Speeds are pretty solid, they have a "secure core", and they claim not to do any logging.

Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy

#25

Post by dx87 » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 5:21 AM UTC

This could do without the clickbait title. "former Israeli spy" is obviously trying to make you think of something nefarious, even though there are no details besides where they worked. I was in an intel unit when I was in the military, and there's a lot of general IT people, managers, etc. It's deliberately deceptive to label anyone who has ever worked at an intel agency as a "spy".

Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy

#26

Post by closeparen » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 5:21 AM UTC

dvduval wrote: post #7

Just a general question about VPN services in general. When they advertise that they have hundreds of servers in a dozen or so countries, is it even possible to think that they are able to secure all of that themselves? Surely some State actor with enough know-how is going to be able to hack into some of the servers, right?

Security effort scales with number of servers only if you’re doing something deeply wrong (like not using configuration management).

Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy

#27

Post by mirimir » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 5:22 AM UTC

extesy wrote: post #23

mirimir wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can also sign up with crypto currency if you want. But can you renew with Bitcoin etc?

There is no difference between singing up and renewing. It's just a balance on some anonymous account number.

Have you tried it recently?

Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy

#28

Post by closeparen » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 5:24 AM UTC

dx87 wrote: post #25

This could do without the clickbait title. "former Israeli spy" is obviously trying to make you think of something nefarious, even though there are no details besides where they worked. I was in an intel unit when I was in the military, and there's a lot of general IT people, managers, etc. It's deliberately deceptive to label anyone who has ever worked at an intel agency as a "spy".

Yeah the whole corporate security community is full of ex spooks. Look at the backgrounds of the Fortune 500’s CISOs.

Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy

#29

Post by mikeyouse » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 5:24 AM UTC

dx87 wrote: post #25

This could do without the clickbait title. "former Israeli spy" is obviously trying to make you think of something nefarious, even though there are no details besides where they worked. I was in an intel unit when I was in the military, and there's a lot of general IT people, managers, etc. It's deliberately deceptive to label anyone who has ever worked at an intel agency as a "spy".

His LinkedIn indicates that he was a developer in the unit that created the Student Virus... Spy has a broad definition but it probably fits for a SigInt developer in the Israeli military..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200

Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy

#30

Post by duskwuff » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 5:24 AM UTC

dvduval wrote: post #7

Just a general question about VPN services in general. When they advertise that they have hundreds of servers in a dozen or so countries, is it even possible to think that they are able to secure all of that themselves? Surely some State actor with enough know-how is going to be able to hack into some of the servers, right?

> When they advertise that they have hundreds of servers in a dozen or so countries...

... they're often lying. In particular, servers in exotic locations are almost always the result of "creative" routing, and are physically located in a more standard country.

https://restoreprivacy.com/vpn-server-locations/