The name of this VPN is now very appropriate... see Urban Dictionary.
PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy
291–300 of 381 posts
Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly my rationale. The fact that you have to explain that the company that bought you is not shady is writing on the wall, even if you have a good explanation. For the record, I think the explanation is pretty decent. But PIA is a commodity product from a technical perspective. It's the trust and reputation that's not the commodity, and being bought by a shady company ( even if it's "formerly shady") you d…
Trust is a fleeting concept. If you used PIA only for the trust and not for the verifiable transparency, then we have failed you. You can't trust some random VPN on internet. Anyone could have set it up. You can only verify. Don't trust. PIA will continue on its mission to increase transparency and set a new standard and expectation in the industry. With PIA, we will make sure you know what you're getting. Some may c…
Transparency is not verifiable, just as it's impossible to prove the non-existence of something.
PIA could appear to be 100% transparent while secretly creating and backing up logs, or passing them through a third-party. An auditor is less likely to be fooled, of course.
The bottom line is that it's reasonable for us to choose our VPN based on both transparency and trust, and we have no reason to trust the new owners.
Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You can only infer that as the result of court case demanding logs. " You can't be sure. In the Lavabit case, Lavabit argued giving up the key protecting all their users... compromising them to the FBI... would cost them customers due to damaged reputation and privacy. The FBI argued they could do it without telling them. Then, Lavabit would still look private with no financial harm. The judge agreed. That proposal…
While I agree with you, I think there's some nuance. In the Lavabit case, the FBI was investigating a national security threat whereas the PIA case involved the hacking of local social media sites. I can see a judge not wanting to rule against the FBI in a case of national security whereas I think a judge would be hesitant to do the same in the case of a misdemeanor offense. Then again, I'm continually surprised by t…
Snowden was not a national security threat, he was a government embarrassment threat. It’s not okay to conflate the two
Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly my rationale. The fact that you have to explain that the company that bought you is not shady is writing on the wall, even if you have a good explanation. For the record, I think the explanation is pretty decent. But PIA is a commodity product from a technical perspective. It's the trust and reputation that's not the commodity, and being bought by a shady company ( even if it's "formerly shady") you d…
Trust is a fleeting concept. If you used PIA only for the trust and not for the verifiable transparency, then we have failed you. You can't trust some random VPN on internet. Anyone could have set it up. You can only verify. Don't trust. PIA will continue on its mission to increase transparency and set a new standard and expectation in the industry. With PIA, we will make sure you know what you're getting. Some may c…
And what, practically, does this verifiable transparency look like? What stops it from being just another _unverifiable_ promise on the internet?
Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for your recommendations. We are working on and hope to go beyond the world of trust. We are now, the most transparent VPN as there are requirements to be transparent when you are a public company. We don't want people to be stuck with having to blindly believe in and trust us like other VPNs. Don't trust. Verify.
In the past I have highly recommended your VPN, but I can no longer. In your TOS you have the line. > Client understands that the present Terms of Service are subject to changes made by PrivateInternetAccess at any time at its sole discretion, and you agree to be bound by any and all modifications, changes and/or revisions. You understand that it is your obligation to periodically review this webpage in order to acco…
I have been frustrated by those lines for years now, I don’t understand how they could even be legal but they are ubiquitous in online contracts
Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy
#296This article and articles like this miscast Kape in an incorrect light. To be clear, in the past the company was known as CrossRider and provided a developer SDK that could be used to integrate with browsers. Unfortunately, CrossRider didn't do enough to prevent malware (like platforms these days and their fake news) and the platform was used by some bad people for bad purposes. When the new management team of CrossR…
Here's an idea or two. Wireguard. Stop sitting on your hands complaining about how wireguard isn't mature, and support it with the generic native apps (now there's even a (beta) windows client). The network address selection issue requires engineering effort, but wireguard itself is most likely not going to address that soon, because it's designed to be a minimal vpn codebase, so why don't you engineer a solution you…
>Explicit stock OpenVPN support. You kind of do this, but it's still difficult or off-putting for non-technical users to figure out which config to grab and how to install the stock client. On your setup page, make sure you're providing a link to the stock (windows) openvpn client and install instructions for Mac and major linux distros, so that people who don't trust your binary blob installer can use the generic one
I'm going to go on a limb and say that the intersection between "people who don't trust the stock client" and "people who don't know about the stock openvpn client and how to set it up" is very small.
Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
>We are changing the world by fighting in the front lines with our PR as we always did [1] You are telling me you did it for PR reasons?? That's not even remotely believable - look at the 'PR' you are getting. This was the goal?? >donating to organizations without pause or hesitation [2] Surely, you have even less of a voice where donations go than before. >and sticking to our decisions even when the world may not un…
Even as a user that for now will not be trusting PIA, I do applaud the advertising I've seen in many corners of the mainstream net trying to educate users about issues they otherwise would have no exposure at all to, unlike us.
I completely agree, I just don't see in what possible way does Kape help with that.
Even if they start doing more outreach (doubt Kape helps much there but say they do) now the messages are just going to be tainted with 'yeah, dont trust those guys' comments when a user looks into it.
Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stuxnet was created by the NSA in a joint operation with 8200. And yes there are 50,000 ex-8200 alumni, so calling all of them spies is kind of absurd
Calling them spy may be wrong, but I certainly won't ever work with, or use technology made by people who worked for an intelligence agency. That's something over which I'd also terminate friendships. And many people have a similar mindset, so it's understandable to report this information, and make consumer choices based on it. That said, Israel should probably consider solutions like other countries with mandatory…
To me the word spy and the term ex-intel paint a very different picture of the person being described.
When I realized this guy was just in the 8200 unit I literally giggled at the notion that all those 18 year old nerds are all spooky spies.
Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
The merger agreement includes a written guarantee to never log. I don't think there is any other VPN that has that, and I _know_ that many other VPNs will not sign that with us.
Er, why isn't this prominently mentioned in the blog post? https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/11/bellum-om... I didn't lose trust in PIA because of Kape, I lost it because your blog post was poorly written and inadequately communicated some very important news. You bury mentions of a merger in the 7th paragraph, wtf? I can't trust PIA if you can't be trusted to clearly communicate such important informat…
I'm getting a "This Connection is Not Private" page when I try to access the website. Andrew please look into this if you see my comment.
Re: PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
Calling them spy may be wrong, but I certainly won't ever work with, or use technology made by people who worked for an intelligence agency. That's something over which I'd also terminate friendships. And many people have a similar mindset, so it's understandable to report this information, and make consumer choices based on it. That said, Israel should probably consider solutions like other countries with mandatory…
To me the word spy and the term ex-intel paint a very different picture of the person being described. When I realized this guy was just in the 8200 unit I literally giggled at the notion that all those 18 year old nerds are all spooky spies.
Do you believe people would continue using a VPN if they knew several of its employees were ex-NSA? No, not at all.
The same applies here, it doesn't matter if you call the people spy or not, VPNs should not have any association with intelligence services.