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

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

#141

Post by Tenoke »

Akababa wrote: post #121
v64 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I'd like to thank you for your participation in this thread. As a long time PIA customer (until recently), I trusted (and still continue to trust) the current staff. All of my hesitation is with Kape and I truly hope at the end of the day they don't end up steamrolling you. That being said, if the company was profitable, why even entertain this merger? I simply don't see how getting into bed with a company wit…

My guess is to partially cash out. According to the doc, the two founders each got about 26m cash and 21m equity in Kape, while PIA only had 14m EBITDA per year and 31m debt. So it's certainly a nice cash windfall for the founders.

This. It seems to be exactly so the founders could cash out.

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

#142

Post by Tenoke »

IceWreck wrote: post #73

It's not just PIA. Nord VPN, ProtonVPN, etc all have ties to or owned by shady companies. It you want real anonymity, use tor. If you want to change your internet access location, lease a VPS, and set up OpenVPN/Wireguard on it.

Why would you think your VPS provider is less likely to save network logs than e.g. Mullvad?

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

#143

Post by kragen »

mirimir wrote: post #78
kragen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a VPS and run a VPN client to it and/or run Tor. VPN providers suffer adverse selection, catering to powerless customers who don't have their own data centers, but have something to hide. And they know who you are, which Tor exit nodes don't. That makes them juicy targets for spies, not all of whose compromises will be as obvious as a financial takeover.

Then you need to trust the VPS provider. Also, using a private VPN proxy, you're the only user. So there's even less anonymity than using a VPN service. The safest bet is arguably Tor. Although the connection to the US government is troubling. And then there's the issue that many sites block Tor users with difficult or impossible CAPTCHAs. Using nested VPN chains is a reasonable compromise. It's much faster than Tor,…

Yes, you need to trust the VPS provider. But many people already trust Amazon with their credit card number, their home address, which books they read when, and which passages they highlight in them, to say nothing of all the other websites they use that Amazon hosts; trusting Amazon instead of Comcast is probably purely an improvement for them.

Tor is not operated by the US government; it's founded by them and partly funded by them. One reason is certainly to spy on Tor users; another reason is so that their own spies have anonymous internet access to exfiltrate stolen information; a third reason is to enable political dissidents in countries like Australia with onerous censorship regimes to access uncensored information.

If you want to use a nested VPN chain that isn't Tor, how do you authenticate to the last provider in the chain, the one that knows which website you're connecting to? Are you using a VPN provider that you pay in ZCash? Or do they allow anyone to use their server without paying, like a Tor exit?

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

#145

Post by redsummer »

v64 wrote: post #3

Former PIA user who recently just moved to Mullvad [1]. Very transparent about their operations and they don't require any information from you to open an account. You can even mail them cash or pay with cryptocurrency to avoid having your real identity financially linked to your subscription. [1] https://mullvad.net/en/

Mullvad is controlled by Elad Yarom - ex-IDF

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

#146

Post by jeltz »

nurettin wrote: post #115
sneak wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And in the VPN world, trust is fundamental. Why do you say this? Isn't it generally believed that most/all large VPN services are monitored specifically by the governments of the countries in which they operate?

Vodafone runs a large vpn, and I know from the people who sell them logging services they are obligated by the governments of multiple nations to keep url logs for a number of months that vary depending on the target's information retaining laws.

Mullvad on the other hand does not log anything at all (other than their Stripe payments where they try to keep data minimal). Is that in violation of the Swedish law? Maybe, but as long as one of the medium sized ISPs, Bahnhof, is still fighting the law in court I cannot foresee any court cases against small fry like Mullvad or any of the other Swedish VPN providers.

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

#147

Post by mirimir »

_8j50 wrote: post #128
mirimir wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NordVPN apparently using residential proxies is pretty iffy.

Makes blocking harder,cloud/hosting IP can't access some content.

I know that it makes blocking harder.

It's just that one wonders whether the people whose devices are being used as proxies are aware of the situation.

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

#148

Post by RealStickman »

I'd suggest anyone looking fo a new vpn to have a look at this site: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/#detailed-vpn-comparison

It was recommended by privacytools.io in an article a few weeks ago as being one of the few sites that don't take money from vpn providers to list them.

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

#149

Post by RealStickman »

jen729w wrote: post #93
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?

Mullvad. No-email signup, pay with Bitcoin, servers all over the place, speeds great. I’ve been with them 6+ months and couldn’t be happier.

Plus wireguard support if you care about that.

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

#150

Post by RealStickman »

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'd suggest you have a look at this site: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/#detailed-vpn-comparison

Personally I'm using Mullvad atm. For windows I use their client, but you can also download configuration files for wireguard if you want to do that.

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