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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

#351

Post by zigzaggy »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #123
zigzaggy wrote: post #21

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…

VPNs have three purposes: 1. Encapsulate traffic on the way from your machine through the first few hops of your Internet connection. 2. Shield your identity from third parties trying to discover it, through technical or legal means. 3. Provide a bottomless pit for disposal of DMCA complaints and other nastygrams. Your solution covers only purpose 1, which is becoming increasingly irrelevant as almost everything uses…

I disagree with a couple of things.

First of all, you missed one thing that is really one of my primary concerns. I hate the idea of my ISP working with other ad surveillance companies to track and sell MY data about mine and my family’s and friends’ online activities.

Having a VPN stops that part of the surveillance machinery from working as intended. Combining that with pihole and other tools allows me to disrupt (at least a little bit) the business of the internet that I hate so much.

Also, Tor and other tools (all part of the same solution above) address #2 to the degree I need it addressed. And I am currently not worried about #3, but with the decentralization of streaming services, it won’t be long now.

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

#352

Post by craftinator »

rasengan wrote: post #4

This 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…

How do we verify that PIA is adhering to it's stated policy? Like, what is the actual process for that? Is there a link you can post that instructs us in this verification?

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

#353

Post by jeltz »

bjourne wrote: post #245
jeltz wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked in the online gambling industry I can say that this article is very outdated and on some points misinformed. Things have changed a lot since 2010, and he is wrong even about how things worked back then. > It is routine for sites to demand the transmission of passport and credit card scans, drivers licenses, utility bills and other personal documents. All the available evidence indicates that…

What you're forgetting to mention is that none of the "improvements" is due to the industry itself. ALL of it has come from government regulation and threats from legislators to ban online gambling unless the casinos clean up their act.

Kinda yes, kinda no. While the user account locking and several other things only happened due to regulators there are other similar issues which the industry fixed itself (e.g. intentionally delaying withdrawals which regulators did not give a fuck about but after one company offered it everyone had to) and reducing the number of sensitive documents necessary to collect (the regulators do not give a fuck about user privacy).

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

#354

Post by jeltz »

rhizome wrote: post #307
jeltz wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked in the online gambling industry I can say that this article is very outdated and on some points misinformed. Things have changed a lot since 2010, and he is wrong even about how things worked back then. > It is routine for sites to demand the transmission of passport and credit card scans, drivers licenses, utility bills and other personal documents. All the available evidence indicates that…

> Only due to the regulating authorities demanding this to prevent money laundering Authorities demand tracking/ID info for users because the industry declines to make laundering impossible on their platforms.

How would you make money laundering impossible? If we could we would. Money launders are shitty customers who mostly just rack up tons of transaction fees for us which their losses just barely pay for.

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

#355

Post by rhizome »

jeltz wrote: post #354
rhizome wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only due to the regulating authorities demanding this to prevent money laundering Authorities demand tracking/ID info for users because the industry declines to make laundering impossible on their platforms.

How would you make money laundering impossible? If we could we would. Money launders are shitty customers who mostly just rack up tons of transaction fees for us which their losses just barely pay for.

I don't know, I'm not in the profession. Maybe start from first principles?

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

#356

Post by jeltz »

smsm42 wrote: post #344
jeltz wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did CrossRider have any honest users? From the little I can find on the Internet it seems like a toolkit for building adware with little to no honest uses.

Small correction - I don't think building adware - as long as it's not hidden, not doing clickfraud, etc. - is necessarily dishonest. It's just not the business which you want to be owning your VPN. Just as cheap used car dealership is not necessarily dishonest, but that's probably not where you want to get your banking or medical service.

Sure, I agree with that correction.

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

#357

Post by jeltz »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #324
magduf wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but as long as one of the medium sized ISPs, Bahnhof An ISP named themselves "train station"?

Sure, there's also a city in Croatia (Pula) which means "dick" in Romanian. People don't usually verify what their brand means in other countries, especially if they have no desire to expand to said country.

I am 100% sure it is intentional since virtually all Swedes know that Bahnhof is German for train station. No idea why they picked that name though.

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

#358

Post by jeltz »

ben_jones wrote: post #222
rasengan wrote: post #4

This 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…

The bottom line is, in 2019 if any of my relatives asked me which VPN to use I would first outline the history of VPNs as a vector for malware/adware and explain to them the supreme level of trust you must have with a VPN provider as a MITM to ALL your internet activity. Only then would I highlight the benefits of VPNs in regards to internet freedoms and circumventing bad content blocks where users want to pay to acc…

Not if you use the packages for OpenVPN or Wireguard from your package repo. Then you only have to trust Wireguard/OpenVPN and your distro to not MITM you. Your VPN cannot do any MITM attacks other than those your ISP can as long as you do not install their client.

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

#359

Post by mirimir »

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #261
mirimir wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it happens all the time. But the implications depend on context. It's not a huge issue that Palantir is loaded with former CIA and NSA people. Except about financial issues. But former intelligence folk running a VPN service? That makes one wonder what their goals actually are. That is, "maintain those connections and shared goals therewith". Many don't trust the Tor Project, for just that reason.

Do you have a source for any of that? Who at the Tor Project is a former intelligence employee?

Core Tor[0]

    ...
    Paul Syverson
    ...
Who else, I don't know.

But hey, I gotta say that Paul seems honorable. And a bloody genius, with a great sense of humor.

I'm not a harsh critic. Just prudently suspicious.

0) https://www.torproject.org/about/people/

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

#360

Post by craftinator »

SahAssar wrote: post #336
rasengan wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t know a person until you see them in the toughest of situations. Mark is a good man and a great developer who fought on the front lines and I’ve known for a long time. I’m not comfortable blindly trusting a random person I meet at a conference with our users’ privacy. You really don’t know who is a current spook, or spy, or worse. Lastly, to put this to bed in a way that only developers and those that unders…

Your CTO doesn't have "infrastructure access"? Am I the only one for who that strikes me as odd?

I get the feeling reading through all of his recent posts that he's willing to say anything that portrays PIA in a positive light, regardless of it's consistency with reality. I just cancelled my account because of all of his PR. Strong with that one, the rhetoric is.
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