151–160 of 381 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure there's such a thing as a former Israeli spy. That being so, this may be a Mossad operation, in which case the US is powerless to do anything about it.
That unit is part of the Israeli army, and Israel has conscription so inevitably a lot of people will end up there. Should none of them be trustworthy?
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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 partl…
All other VPNs in my chains, I pay with Bitcoin that's been mixed multiple times. I have a bunch of Whonix instances that I use for mixing and storing Bitcoin. They all hit Tor through nested VPN chains.
Each one has an Electrum wallet. It gets its Bitcoin from another Whonix instance through a mixing service. In any given mixing chain, I use a different mixing service for each step.
So then, generally, VPNs that I use less directly get paid with Bitcoin that's been mixed more times. And I never use the same Bitcoin wallet to pay for VPNs at different "levels".
Edit: You say:
> But many people already trust Amazon with ...
I trust Amazon with all those things. As my meatspace identity.
But I wouldn't trust them with information that associates my meatspace identity with Mirimir.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 merger between Kape and PIA affords PIA the resources needed to bring privacy to the mainstream. You were one of the most, if not the most successful VPN provider for years. Did you really need more resources? For what? The main benefit of PIA is the expectation for extra privacy. No matter how you look at it, selling to Kape is a strong signal that's not a priority. Similar, for hiring Karpeles to do your secur…
Yes, to bring freedom thru privacy to people, The coming battle against privacy and free speech is by far the strongest and worst yet; the narrative and our voices are quickly getting quashed.
Without the ability to communicate privately and speak freely, at best democracy is at risk; and at worst, humanity, or what it has meant to be human until now, itself may be at risk.
Divided we are not stronger.
> Similar, for hiring Karpeles to do your security (like he hasnt lost us enough already).
Cryptocurrency has come a long way, and without MtGox and Mark at the beginning, it may not have been able to make such strides.
I prefer a battle hardened individual over a clean track record of no experience. Failure is the fastest and strongest way to learn and grow stronger.
Overall, I appreciate your words and concerns, but I believe we are strategically moving in the right direction to the world's benefit.
Time will tell.
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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.
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/
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.
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.
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…
Your argument about Kape is persuasive. And I do want to "trust" (as much as I ever do) PIA. It's one of the few that's actually been tested by criminal investigation of a user. And it did, in fact, retain no logs. I've also been impressed by London Trust Media projects. And I appreciate that increased resources are a good thing. So anyway, I do wish y'all well.