Who owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN relationships explained (2024) • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by nerdsniper » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 10:49 PM UTC

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 for the move started before the war, according to Dainius Vanagas, CEO of CyberCare, one of the reasons why it was followed through was a desire to help Ukraine rebuild."[0]

They also donated money to help arm Ukraine.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesonet

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

#92

Post by gruez » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 10:50 PM UTC

sporkxrocket wrote: post #61

gruez wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Teddy Sagi had connections with the Israeli military intelligence sphere Does this mean much given that israel has mandatory military service? Unlike in the US where you have to make a conscious choice (eg. patriotism or desperation) to join the CIA/NSA/military, that's not really the case in israel. "has ties to unit 8200" might as well mean "has ties to stanford/MIT/caltech" or "has ties to big tech".

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.

I don't see how that addresses my point that enlistment is mandatory in israel. You can make similar claims about other israeli military units. If anything, given the current war in Gaza whatever the other IDF branches/units are doing are probably worse than hacking a few phones.

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

#93

Post by nerdsniper » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 10:52 PM UTC

plmpsu wrote: post #4

Just pay for and use Mullvad.

By mailing cash, if you like. They don't care if they know who you are or not. They don't ask for your email address, you just log in with a randomly-assigned account number and a password.

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

#94

Post by sporkxrocket » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 10:52 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #92

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.

I don't see how that addresses my point that enlistment is mandatory in israel. You can make similar claims about other israeli military units. If anything, given the current war in Gaza whatever the other IDF branches/units are doing are probably worse than hacking a few phones.

Unit 8200 is part of the IDF and contributing to those war crimes. I as a consumer only need to consider my own risk profile, not the politics of an entity that's committing acts I consider to be terrorism.

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

#95

Post by dongcarl » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 10:54 PM UTC

We should really be moving towards a world of Multi-Party Relays rather than Single-Party VPN operators: https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2024/11/17/where-are-...

With Multi-Party Relays you no longer have a trust a single entity not being malicious or compromised.

Disclaimer: I run obscura.net, which does exactly this with Mullvad (our partner) as the Exit Hop.

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

#96

Post by nerdsniper » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 10:54 PM UTC

0x073 wrote: post #20

plmpsu wrote: post #4

Just pay for and use Mullvad.

Just spin up a server with wireguard.

This is the way (or Tailscale). Easier to move around between datacenters to find one with an ASN/IP that isn't blocked by the apps/websites you use. If you do want a more off-the-shelf solution, Mullvad is probably the best choice. All of the consumer VPNs (including Mullvad) get blocked by various services - I get degraded/intermittent connection to Google Maps on them. GCC countries block most of the well-known VPNs as well, if you ever travel to the Arabian/Persian Gulf region. My private datacenter VPN gets blocked only very, very rarely.

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

#97

Post by gruez » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 10:55 PM UTC

sporkxrocket wrote: post #94

gruez wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that addresses my point that enlistment is mandatory in israel. You can make similar claims about other israeli military units. If anything, given the current war in Gaza whatever the other IDF branches/units are doing are probably worse than hacking a few phones.

Unit 8200 is part of the IDF and contributing to those war crimes. I as a consumer only need to consider my own risk profile, not the politics of an entity that's committing acts I consider to be terrorism.

[flagged]

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

#98

Post by sporkxrocket » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 10:56 PM UTC

dongcarl wrote: post #95

We should really be moving towards a world of Multi-Party Relays rather than Single-Party VPN operators: https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2024/11/17/where-are-... With Multi-Party Relays you no longer have a trust a single entity not being malicious or compromised. Disclaimer: I run obscura.net, which does exactly this with Mullvad (our partner) as the Exit Hop.

Can you control the geography of the exit node? I really like Private Relay but it doesn't get around geo restrictions because the IP is still in the same country you are.

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

#99

Post by drekipus » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 11:00 PM UTC

qntmfred wrote: post #44

octo888 wrote: post #19

Are we allowed to discuss (edit: if it's not too political?) if Kape Technologies has any connections to Israeli security services, given the nature of VPNs and given the amount of data that can be trivially collected, and: "Being from Israel, Teddy Sagi had connections with the Israeli military intelligence sphere and was able to procure himself a real-life cyber spy [his co-founder] from the famed Unit 8200 (kinda…

[flagged]

Calling out Israeli conspiracy isn't Jew hating.

This is the whole issue. No one can question what Israel is doing for fear of anti semitimtism.

If everyone is "anti-semitic" then you allow real antisemitism to foster unabated.

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

#100

Post by andrecarini » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 11:01 PM UTC

throwawayq3423 wrote: post #25

VonGuard wrote: post #6

Been saying it for YEARS: 95% of VPNs sell your data. It's where they make their money. It's absolutely insane the push-back I get when I say this online. I get downvoted to hell and back. Source: I bought this data from VPN companies... Hell, you can inject ads and surveys if you want!

> Hell, you can inject ads and surveys if you want! So am I right in saying that the data that's encrypted by VPNS is only in transit? It then sits on a server in plain text, ready to be queried by third parties for money.

Yes, VPNs add encryption only between you and the VPN servers.