331–340 of 381 posts
I've been trying to cancel/shorten my year subscription since this came out. This + hiring Mark Karpeles as CTO are a solid guarantee that my data isn't safe. Sadly, they just have a stock response to everyone emailing which is grating.
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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
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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?
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The VPN that I connect directly to, I pay with a credit card. They know who I am, so why bother trying to hide. 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 servi…
Interesting! Which VPN providers can you recommend?
Those are all relatively old, compared to mainstream VPN services. So there's been more time for bad news to come out.
I've also used older ones, such as Cryptohippie and Rayservers. They're among the first OpenVPN-based services. Cryptohippie used to be quite expensive, with a ~low usage limit. But now its price is comparable to many others, and I don't see a usage cap. It's not as fast as many others, but arguably far better secured against adversaries.
Rayservers is extremely old school. They only accept gold-based electronic currencies (Truledger and Loom). Those are pre-Bitcoin. I'm not sure whether they still work.
There are others that I use. But I'm not going to talk about them.
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"The merger between Kape and PIA affords PIA the resources needed" I'm one of those people who understand the importance of reputation and integrity. One bad deal might ruin mine forever. You needed resources to expand your privacy business. Did you try and fail to partner with reputable businesses such as Mozilla, get funding from governments/foundations, etc? Did you try to get with amoral companies whose backgroun…
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…
He stole more money from me than I make in a year. There's surely plenty of other people in this very thread who he also cost dearly because of his callous disregard for our money. He knew the whole time that MtGox was insolvent and he used my cash, everyone's cash, as a giant slush fund. He had no problem pocketing that cash and paying himself a comfy salary knowing full well that he had tons of customers who made the mistake of trusting him with their money and he already lost it. Not to mention trying to make off with the domain and data from his old employer and then after they revoked the domain transfer that Mark fraudulently made he tried to extort it out of them. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1227216-karpeles-eng...
>and a great developer
We know exactly what kind of developer Mark is. MtGox didn't even use any form of version control. We have leaked copies of Mark's handiwork and it's absolutely horrifying that someone with his lack of talent was managing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of money. https://github.com/mtgoxleaker/mtgoxphp/blob/90822722620407e...
We're talking about the guy whose legal defense was that he was just incompetent and not malicious. He quite literally just completely forgot about a cold wallet filled with what was at the time worth well over 100 million dollars. No reasonable person would ever conclude that Mark is "a great developer".
I'd be much more comfortable trusting some rando from Defcon than a serial con man that has done nothing but lie and defraud customers and employers for well over a decade. And he's woefully incompetent to boot. Hiring Mark Karpeles as CTO is nothing but bald faced nepotism.
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"The merger between Kape and PIA affords PIA the resources needed" I'm one of those people who understand the importance of reputation and integrity. One bad deal might ruin mine forever. You needed resources to expand your privacy business. Did you try and fail to partner with reputable businesses such as Mozilla, get funding from governments/foundations, etc? Did you try to get with amoral companies whose backgroun…
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…
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/
Gave them a try for a month. Very easy to set up with WireGuard. One thing I liked about PIA’s app is the kill switch function that prevents internet connection if you’re not on the vpn. Does that happen by default when I have wireguard enabled? I use this in a place I don’t trust and need to make sure it doesn’t accidentally connect “raw”. Another nice PIA feature is the ability to check server speed. Any way to kno…
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…
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?
Ugh, this sucks. I've used PIA for ages as well. Their infrastructure is really great too - I get better latency on PIA than my own ISP sometimes!
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Snowden was not a national security threat, he was a government embarrassment threat. It’s not okay to conflate the two
I'm not conflating anything nor am I making a judgement on the FBI's motives. The FBI issued a national security letter that Lavabit fought in court, which I feel Lavabit should have won. The point you missed is the FBI and the judge put a bit more weight towards forcing Lavabit's hand than it did in PIA's case because of the scope and severity of the offenses, perceived or otherwise.