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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

#91

Post by input_sh »

kragen wrote: post #61
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?

Get a VPS and run a VPN client to it and/or run Tor. VPN providers suffer adverse selection, catering to powerless customers who don't have their own data centers, but have something to hide. And they know who you are, which Tor exit nodes don't. That makes them juicy targets for spies, not all of whose compromises will be as obvious as a financial takeover.

The entire point why I'm using a VPN is that I want my traffic to be lost in the crowd, not to be the only one using a VPN from a VPS.

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

#92

Post by rasengan »

_joe wrote: post #42
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…

Changing of ownership fundamentally resets the trust we all had in PIA, which was due to you having proven in court you deliver on what you declare. And in the VPN world, trust is fundamental. I am still surprised you didn't see this coming.

I think an increase in ownership base fundamentally makes it easier to trust an entity, especially in a public company setting where transparency is a must.

Rather than trusting 1/1 owner of a company you just need to trust 1/n with significant control.

The original PIA group will maintain significant control.

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

#93

Post by jen729w »

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?

Mullvad. No-email signup, pay with Bitcoin, servers all over the place, speeds great. I’ve been with them 6+ months and couldn’t be happier.

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

#94

Post by LMYahooTFY »

user982 wrote: post #86
rasengan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the security and cryptography community I think you'd be hard pressed to find people without similar backgrounds. I think being exposed to how insecure the world is and to what levels drives people to secure the world and empowers people to provide privacy and security to people. Some people whistleblow, while others develop software, and many lecture and teach people.

> Some people whistleblow, while others develop software, and many lecture and teach people. And most have no problems with what they saw or did, and many used the contacts and knowledge gained from that background to further their civilian careers in the field and continue to maintain those connections and shared goals therewith.

Excuse if I'm wrong, but is the implication that this should not occur at all?

I'm not sure how that's even possible.

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

#95

Post by v64 »

sneak wrote: post #84
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/

What is it that you believe that PIA is doing or is likely to do, that you believe this service is not/will not be doing?

Given Kape's past history, I'm skeptical that PIA will be able to maintain their current levels of privacy regarding data mining and logging. I'm willing to give PIA the benefit of the doubt and accept that they believe they'll be able to do so, but as is the case in mergers like these, sometimes you simply lose that battle with your new corporate partner. My fear is that they end up doing the same level of shady activity as NordVPN [1] [2] or worse. The fact that Kape paid off PIA's $32.1m debt as part of the deal leads me to believe they'll be looking for more creative ways to monetize the service in the future. Since PIA was in debt, it doesn't sound like maintaining the current service as is would be profitable.

Mullvad's policies and account creation process demonstrate an awareness and commitment to privacy as a number one priority. Yes, at the end of the day, none of us really knows what a VPN service is doing on the back end, but the fact that they have detailed public information about their operations, as well as additional privacy options such as paying with cash/crypto, is a good sign. Other little things, such as supporting WireGuard and running their own Bitcoin nodes instead of relying on third party services for crypto payments, are also good signs that their team has above average technical chops compared to other providers.

[1] https://medium.com/@derek./how-is-nordvpn-unblocking-disney-...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21664692

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

#96

Post by rasengan »

SanchoPanda wrote: post #52
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…

Thanks for speaking up here. The point on this now being a public company with mandated reporting is interesting. And I found the supplemental presentation decks interesting as well. [1] One thing that stood out to me is that while public, it's still controlled by one person [2], is there a plan to broaden that and be accountable to more people? [1] https://investors.kape.com/reports-and-presentations/2019 [1a] Slide…

Great question! That’s part of the plan.

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

#97

Post by harias »

arthurcolle wrote: post #60
dmix wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also technically don't have to give your real information to a VPN provider.

It could potentially be a violation of Terms of Service to provide a false identity to any provider of any given set of services, but I guess you're technically right.

They don't ask for any identity information right? ProtonVPN even accepts mailing them cash with no return address.

Payment options: https://protonvpn.com/support/payment-options/

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

#98

Post by ampersandy »

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.

Er, why isn't this prominently mentioned in the blog post?

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2019/11/bellum-om...

I didn't lose trust in PIA because of Kape, I lost it because your blog post was poorly written and inadequately communicated some very important news. You bury mentions of a merger in the 7th paragraph, wtf?

I can't trust PIA if you can't be trusted to clearly communicate such important information.

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

#100

Post by sneak »

v64 wrote: post #95
sneak wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it that you believe that PIA is doing or is likely to do, that you believe this service is not/will not be doing?

Given Kape's past history, I'm skeptical that PIA will be able to maintain their current levels of privacy regarding data mining and logging. I'm willing to give PIA the benefit of the doubt and accept that they believe they'll be able to do so, but as is the case in mergers like these, sometimes you simply lose that battle with your new corporate partner. My fear is that they end up doing the same level of shady act…

Why do you have the belief that the government in the country that the VPN provider is operating is not logging everything that goes into or out of the provider (with or without the provider's knowledge)?

It seems pretty plain to me; Mullvad's website even has the relevant section on Swedish legislation that requires it for national defense.

I just don't see how trust in a provider has any bearing whatsoever on the privacy of the connection they provide; they can't do anything whatsoever to stop (or even detect) governments from logging all of the data that comes into or out of their networks.

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