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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

#181

Post by stedaniels »

mkl wrote: post #9
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…

Hi Andrew, you may want to tidy up your HN "about" info if you're speaking on behalf of the company.

For the untidied version: https://web.archive.org/web/20190330095314/https://news.ycom...

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

#182

Post by inglor »

chippy wrote: post #179

Seems to me that the "spy" was doing mandatory military service when he was 18 in the Intelligence part of the army? It seems common for many Israeli technically minded teens to go into that or similar wings rather than the more on the ground units. It was from 1995 to 1998 (that's 20 years ago now) before he was at University and is the first item in his work experience. And the length of the position is about the s…

Yes, and CrossRider mostly did an SDK for cross-browser extensions. I used their product before they did ads and it worked pretty well.

I stopped using them because I could stop supporting IE but they had a real product back then.

Teddy Sagi is bad for other (gambling related) reasons - but he is just an investor...

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

#183

Post by jonathanstrange »

guelo wrote: post #75

What do people use these VPN services for? Is it mostly for pirating, or public wifi users, or people that don't want their ISPs to know what they're doing? It all seems like niche use cases.

Unlocking geolocation-locked content.

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

#184

Post by fock »

rasengan wrote: post #154
Tenoke wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Did you really need more resources? For what? 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 r…

would you mind to elaborate how a centralized VPN-service is helping against suppression of the internet as a channel? Once your DNS/servers are gone, your VPN is gone, thus your users have to fall back to metadata collection by their ISP instead of you...

P.S.: you are aware that you can still go into the next pub and speak freely with verified (e.g. drinking liquor) humans, which solves by far the biggest issue with "free speech" on todays internet in the "west"

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

#185

Post by sojmq »

dannyw wrote: post #83
skibop wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riseup support leftist terrorists which are protected by the state. This is likely also run indirectly by the NSA or Israeli spy orgs.

Don't you want a VPN to be content neutral?

"Riseup provides online communication tools for people and groups working on liberatory social change." Does this sound neutral to you? Have you seen the half-red, half-black star which they use as a logo?

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

#186

Post by iddan »

It is worth mentioning a large portion of Israel talented IT youth is enlisted to intelligence technological units in IDF. So, every cyber company founded / hiring in Israel will almost always have people from those units. But, this is not such a big deal and definitely doesn't make them spies.

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

#187

Post by jeltz »

BatZzZz wrote: post #111

This is such nonsense... The author ought to be sued for slandering. Crossrider/Kape acquired quite a few companies over the years. In fact, it went public in 2015 when it was profitable, and the money was going to be used for M&As. I know, because my own company was acquired by them. I know Koby, the first CEO. He is no more of a "spy" than any other Israeli who served in the army (now is the cue for anyone with a h…

Did CrossRider have any other users than companies wishing to install adware, changing browser start pages and similar shady shit? Sure, it could theoretically be used for other things but had it any significant number of honest users?

When I google CrossRider I virtually only get hits from various anti-malware companies, including Microsoft.

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

#188

Post by teddyuk »

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…

What does "The company can now be decentrally owned by the people" even mean?

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

#189

Post by jeltz »

rasengan wrote: post #125
smsm42 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for taking time to explain your position. I can appreciate the need for resources and why you think this deal is the right thing to do for your company. I've trusted you company enough to use it for years and buy a multi-year subscription. Unfortunately, given the track record of Kape, I can't trust the bundle of Kape+PIA the way I trusted PIA alone. Maybe in the following years this trust will be accumulat…

If you think a platform is responsible for what their developers do with it, then I understand. However, Kape was never directly involved in adware other than providing SDKs that let developers create positive and negative things. To say Kape was involved in adware would be akin to saying the Wright Bros killed millions of people - because they made planes which people used to kill people (which is simply untrue). Ev…

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.
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