Do we now have a potential VPN criminal conglomerate?

VPN
1

As many of you have already read, Private Internet Access has recently been acquired by a company named “Kape Technologies”. “Kape Technologies” is a huge company that also owns the likes of CyberGhost VPN as well as Zenmate. I decided to read more and found facts that thoroughly shocked me:

• CyberGhost was acquired by “Kape Technologies” (previously named “Crossrider”) back in 2017. “Crosrider” was known to hide malware/adware in their software and then sell data collected by it.

• The co-founder of “Kape Technologies”, Teddy Sagi was sentenced to prison in regards to fraud and bribery back in 1996.

• CyberGhost VPN service was also found to have WebRTC, IPv6 as well as DNS leaks multiple times, risking its users’ privacy.

• Private Internet Access hired Mark Karpeles (ex-CEO of MT.Gox BitCoin platform) as their CTO. Karpeles was arrested and found guilty when tampering with financial records, trying to hide the platform’s loss by combining his personal finances with the exchange’s.

• Private Internet Access’s founder, Andrew Lee, also known as “Rasengan” on HackerNews, made serious allegations against ProtonVPN.

• Allegations against NordVPN followed, where PIA’s employee was caught sharing a misleading PDF as a ‘concerned citizen’.

• An ex-employee of Private Internet Access was threatened due to disclosing management issues, therefore spilling a lot of information about the company.

• The same employee disclosed that PIA faked Reddit comments and ordered to downvote negative feedback about the product.

• Another thing to consider is that before acquisition, Private Internet Access was in debt of over $32 million.

The facts about these companies were easy to find, to be honest, I didn’t need to dig deep to find them. I am just truthfully shocked about this and how much I didn’t know about the companies beforehand. Personally, given this knowledge, I am not going to support these companies, especially when they potentially have criminal past and present activities.

P.S. Had to use my relative’s account just cause someone is working hard to remove these posts :slight_smile:

Edit: By the way - has anyone tried sharing these news with journalists, for example, PcMag or TechRadar (they’re unbiased imho)? I don’t see the story being covered at all, especially with these added details

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Welcome to the current state of the VPN industry. It’s full of unsavory characters that you DO KNOW, and likely a lot more that you don’t. Then add the parasitic VPN affiliate/promotion industry spewing lies and big media conglomerates that promote VPNs, now actually acquiring VPN companies (see J2 Global).

Then you have clueless “influencers” hawking whatever gets them paid the most, without ANY research or understanding. Someone that unboxes phones, or runs a travel vlog has absolutely no business promoting security products.

3

Well that was a wild ride reading this, tbh was not expecting that. On the other hand, you say these are facts, but are there any legitimate sources or proof for these “facts”?

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• The co-founder of “Kape Technologies”, Teddy Sagi was sentenced to prison in regards to fraud and bribery back in 1996.

Fun fact: in Japanese, sagi means « scam »

5

Time to cancel my PIA this year and try out a new vpn service

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As a 4 or 5 year PIA subscriber (expires in March), I was in the market for a new VPN. Hated everything I saw about Nord, Express seemed the best but was the mostly costly, and there were the issues I saw brought up similar to Nord and PIA (with paid reviews etc). Torrentfreak comment linked this post, read it and bookmarked it. Then read it again and noticed it was r/Windscribe Looked into Winscribe, tried out the free version and just subbed.

It reminds me of the smaller Internet providers in Canada (Teksavvy & Start) with their humour. Only complaint is the lack of a proper Linux client. But thanks to this post, it encouraged me to look into Windscribe and then sub.

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I’m a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

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  1. Contact ↩︎

8

If I were a PIA user I would panic. Nothing is safe anymore.

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Reply from Developer

Sorry, I can’t see the reply. Can someone link to it? Thanks.

10

Well the tech world in general is full of unsavory characters no one wants to admit it.

11

i dont want to use pia if they allow them to install adware on our computer this is terrible that they got bought by a shitty company who has a horrible track record

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So I got like a two year pia sub, what do I do? If I cancel it they already have my data, so what is the point?

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• The same employee disclosed that PIA faked Reddit comments and ordered to downvote negative feedback about the product.

Insane

Linus Tech Tips released a video today talking about PIA being sold to Kape McAfee and setting up your own VPN.

14

Just to be clear Windscribe still hasn’t submitted to an audit.

15

Fuck new Reddit API changes.

Edited using r/apolloapp

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The reason why they turn to sponsor deals is when you depend on something like YouTube for your livelihood and survival financially, and then that exact income becomes unstable, they have to look for other means especially since they have already commited to being an influencer. Neither the influencer him/herself or their fan base would be happy if they just leave.

So, just like Alfred said in The Dark Knight: “in their desperation, they turned to a man they didn’t fully understand”. Not everyone would take the effort to find out every detail of the company that’s paying you for advertisement, especially if they don’t understand or have some background info. Sure you can research it, but they probably don’t have the time. They see an opportunity and they take it.

17

Your comment about influencers reminded me of this great video.

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J2 Global??? they are phreakers, hackers and known spammers for sure and not above ddosing,

No wonder they are interested in VPNs. Proceed with caution yall.

19

Believe it, I honestly had no idea myself. And the thing is - I personally thought that something like this would be idk, covered up somehow but nope - it’s in plain sight, easily accessible

20

I fucking love Windscribe. Besides their awesome service, those guys send some dope emails whenever there’s some updates!