they were all owned by the same company and sold to Kape, which has ties to the Israeli intelligence service, a few years back.
The issue is who he sold it to – the notorious creator of some pernicious data-huffing ad-ware, Crossrider. The UK-based company was cofounded by an ex-Israeli surveillance agent and a billionaire previously convicted of insider trading who was later named in the Panama Papers. It produced software which previously allowed third-party developers to hijack users’ browsers via malware injection, redirect traffic to advertisers and slurp up private data.
I personally use perfect-privacy, which didn’t turn up any red flags when I did research a few years ago. it’s a little lacking in features but openvpn isn’t that hard to set up on linux & android. no clue how well their desktop app works.
Mullvad is what I use, haven’t heard of any controversies with them.
Seconding Mullvad, you can send them an envelope of cash or buy a code off amazon if you really care about it that much. Technically they’re in a 14 eyes country but no one here is important enough to worry about that.