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Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

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Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#381

Post by vincentpants »

kouru225 wrote: post #368
wongarsu wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A VPN is always a risk. Still, there is a difference between using Mulvad or PrivateInternetAccess. The difference between risking that the service might do bad things with your data, and having high certainty that it does. And this article gives pretty good indications which category each service belongs to

You’d put private internet access in the really bad category?

Yes. Very much so. PIA was purchased by a British-Israeli corporation called Kape Inc. which has been a known bad-actor in the past and is a giant red flag when looking for VPN options. (edited away the brevity)

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#382

Post by verteu »

pessimizer wrote: post #377
nerdsniper wrote: post #91

Note that all of these companies are also under the umbrella of Tesonet, a Lithuanian VC firm also headed by Tomas Okmanas (Tom Okman in TFA). Their flagship investments are Nord Security, Hostinger, Oxylabs, Surfshark, Decodo, Mediatech, and nexos.ai - all closely related business models around proxying. They don't seem to have Russian ties: "In 2022, CyberCare opened an office in Lviv, Ukraine. Although planning fo…

[flagged]

Russiagate was not a "fictional narrative," as a cursory amount of research will reveal.

> The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigation released their report in five volumes between July 2019 and August 2020. The committee concluded that the intelligence community assessment alleging Russian interference was "coherent and well-constructed", and that the assessment was "proper", learning from analysts that there was "no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions".[11][12] The report found that the Russian government had engaged in an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in favor of Trump, which included assistance from some of Trump's own advisers.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#383

Post by sporkxrocket »

tguvot wrote: post #376
sporkxrocket wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unit 8200 is a cyberwarfare and spy unit. They were responsible for the Lebanon pager supply chain terror attack. I definitely want to know if they are involved with any tech I'm using so I can avoid it.

yes. they are involved in tech that you are using. they are working in apple, google, microsoft, nvidia, intel, amd, arm, qualcomm, cisco, etc that have presence in Israel and even expand it. https://www.timesofisrael.com/nvidia-plans-to-boost-presence...

Talking about the breath of which Israel has compromised our technology is actually helping to make my point. They're operating a comprehensive surveillance network and have the ability to literally plant explosives in our consumer devices.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#384

Post by IAmBroom »

squigz wrote: post #307
danw1979 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know an awful lot of detail about the inner workings of two separate private companies though.

Is it really that shocking that someone on HN would have worked at as many as 2 private companies?

Nor is it shocking that a company with a PR issue would be astroturfing our forum.

The point is: we don't know.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#385

Post by tguvot »

sporkxrocket wrote: post #383
tguvot wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes. they are involved in tech that you are using. they are working in apple, google, microsoft, nvidia, intel, amd, arm, qualcomm, cisco, etc that have presence in Israel and even expand it. https://www.timesofisrael.com/nvidia-plans-to-boost-presence...

Talking about the breath of which Israel has compromised our technology is actually helping to make my point. They're operating a comprehensive surveillance network and have the ability to literally plant explosives in our consumer devices.

[flagged]

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#386

Post by IAmBroom »

pessimizer wrote: post #377
nerdsniper wrote: post #91

Note that all of these companies are also under the umbrella of Tesonet, a Lithuanian VC firm also headed by Tomas Okmanas (Tom Okman in TFA). Their flagship investments are Nord Security, Hostinger, Oxylabs, Surfshark, Decodo, Mediatech, and nexos.ai - all closely related business models around proxying. They don't seem to have Russian ties: "In 2022, CyberCare opened an office in Lviv, Ukraine. Although planning fo…

[flagged]

Our last President was haunted by completely unverified claims of business ties with Ukraine. Someone in UKR clearly tried to buy influence via his son, but all the force of Fox News and the GOP together couldn't produce one single sticky-note worth of evidence tying it to any success.

Painting "armed invasion" as "Russian presence" is like calling "stabbing someone in an alley" a "medical procedure".

We get it; you love Mother Russia.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#387

Post by IAmBroom »

Y_Y wrote: post #318
dartharva wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually not uncommon in most of the world. American 1A is actually an extremely novel concept most other countries still haven't caught up on.

Novel in what sense? Are you familiar with the hisory of free speech in e.g. the UK, Sweden, and France?

The UK, where the government has literally smashed printing presses in the newspaper age when magazines were thought to be publishing embarrassing news about the Crown? Where the government's legal authority to do so is still intact? That UK?

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#388

Post by IAmBroom »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #372
justapassenger wrote: post #8

Is there any other real world usecases for VPN nowadays other than: 1. Getting access to geolocked data 2. Torrenting "Linux ISOs" ?

Why torrentingn Linux isos?

It's the classic "legal" use for torrenting, as many Linux orgs send users to torrents for updates.

If someone also accidentally downloads a TB of movies and music on the way to the latest Mint upgrade, oops.

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#389

Post by sporkxrocket »

tguvot wrote: post #385
sporkxrocket wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about the breath of which Israel has compromised our technology is actually helping to make my point. They're operating a comprehensive surveillance network and have the ability to literally plant explosives in our consumer devices.

[flagged]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Lebanon_electronic_device...

> the attack killed 42 people, including 12 civilians, and injured 4,000 civilians

Re: Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024)

#390

Post by IAmBroom »

retube wrote: post #58
gambiting wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. Avoiding government-mandated record keeping by ISPs in a country like the UK, where all ISPs have to keep a year of your browsing history and it can be accessed warrant free by 17 different agencies(including DEFRA, the agriculture agency). And yes, I'm aware that you're most likely trading one surveilence for another - but honestly at this point I'd much rather trust my paid VPN provider with my browsing data tha…

> but honestly at this point I'd much rather trust my paid VPN provider with my browsing data than my ISP and ultimately the government. Your ISP will need to comply with local laws and regulations, and you'll have some recourse if broken. A third-party VPN operating in an overseas jurisdiction could be doing anything with your data.

> Your ISP will need to comply with local laws and regulations,

I think you've managed to exactly describe the problem with them, and yet you phrase it as a positive.

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