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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

#211

Post by rimliu »

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…

   > to bring freedom thru privacy to people
"The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment" vibe is strong with this one. For the record, the part I quoted is from, I believe, most downvoted comment on reddit[0], currently on ~670 thousands of downvotes.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b...

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

#212

Post by dorian-graph »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #10
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/

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.

I've used Mullvad on iOS with OpenVPN and Wireguard with no issues.

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

#213

Post by [deleted] »

NickHoff wrote: post #64
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?

Me too. I cancelled my subscription about a week ago when I first heard of it (and I explained why on their cancellation form). I'm looking at Mullvad and NordVPN. I know Nord had a MITM attack on a Finnish datacenter a few months ago and didn't immediately notify affected users. I'm having trouble understanding what it says about Nord's culture and likely behavior in the future. On a technical level, it's pretty bad…

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by mmxcz »

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 recommend ProtonVPN. So far I've been very happy with them and since they're Swiss-based, I am much less concerned about privacy than in the case of a US-based company. I even received a few months of free subscription when I fixed a bug in their CLI client.

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

#215

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

rasengan wrote: post #15
juanbyrge wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, nothing has changed yet. That's how it goes with acquisitions. But people (including myself) are more concerned about the future. At some point in the future there will pressure from within Kape to increase revenues. And at that point I don't want my browsing data to be sold to advertisers and marketing agencies.

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.

Yet the only seeming relevant principle of the 'Kape principles' is:

> 3. Zero Data – sanctity of personal data – we believe each individual owns his own data therefore we will never store or attempt to sell what does not belong to us.

Which is vague in the extreme. It does not clarify what 'personal data' means. Is my internet activity when using PIA/Kape's network still my own? Or does Kape now make a claim on this data?

If there is really a 'never log' guarantee, why is this not prominently displayed in the discussion of the merger?

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

#216

Post by oefrha »

hncommenter13 wrote: post #204
rasengan wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Again, in the interests of historical accuracy, Crossrider did more than that. They actively provided monetization for traffic from installed apps. I have in my email a post from longtime senior employee Yonatan Pesses to a LinkedIn group (then named "Downloadable Software Distribution & Monetization") for people working in the pay-per-install space. It is dated Dec 5, 2014, and it reads: "Crossrider is offering an a…

That’s about as innocent as Megaupload was as a file sharing website.

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

#217

Post by inglor »

jeltz wrote: post #187
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.

I used crossrider at an earlier startup and migrated from it when I could stop supporting IE. It worked pretty well when it worked for cross browser extensions.

Our product (TipRanks) brought financial accountability to the market and it was a paid product. Our business model was just plain SaaS. While I am no longer there I think it's a decent and mostly honest company

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

#218

Post by jeltz »

RealStickman wrote: post #153
jeltz wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The difference is probably that Sweden isn't as privacy unfriendly as the USA, despite being part of the fourteen eyes programme.

I think it is more about us being culturally less friendly towards secret court orders, and with just handing over customers to the authorities without proper process. Does our sigint operations monitor Mullvad's exit and entry nodes in Sweden? Maybe, but I do not think Swedish authorities will be able to force Mullvad's staff to silently add a backdoor. I mean they have not yet managed to get Bahnhof to comply with the current law since Bahnhof argues that some EU directive makes the Swedish law illegal.

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

#219

Post by jeltz »

inglor wrote: post #217
jeltz wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used crossrider at an earlier startup and migrated from it when I could stop supporting IE. It worked pretty well when it worked for cross browser extensions. Our product (TipRanks) brought financial accountability to the market and it was a paid product. Our business model was just plain SaaS. While I am no longer there I think it's a decent and mostly honest company

Thanks for the reply. Did you have any issues with your extension being caught by malware removal programs?
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