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.
ExpressVPN also uses dark pattern UI design to make it harder to cancel, if the above wasn’t enough of a reason to avoid it.
There’s a significant difference between the threat model surrounding vpns that you intend to use for port forwarding torrents and vpns you intend to use to protect yourself from data harvesting/the cops.
Don’t expect one to do both.
I’m posting this here because a lot of use a VPN for organizing. this doesn’t matter if all you care about is torrenting.
perfect-privacy
$120 a year, god damn. I used PIA because it was $80 for 3 years and because like 10 people can use the same account.
for others switching from PIA,
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kaspersky is about $35 a year ($30 first year, then $45) for 5 devices
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protonvpn $60 a year for 10 devices with the 2 year plan
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Mullvad is $60ish a year for 5 devices (no port forwarding)
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IVPN is $80 a year for 7 devices with 2 yr plan (no port forwarding)
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Westerners don’t want to admit this, but the only safe VPNs are made by their enemies lol. And this isn’t even “tankie” propaganda. If you were Russian or Chinese it’d be your best interest to use western VPNs. Maybe not American ones unless you want to end up like burned Iranian CIA assets
Kaspersky was at least at one point a resold version of hotspot.
here’s an article that has a lot of details.
Hotspot isn’t exactly in the best situation to be a vpn you’d trust if you were worried about law enforcement.
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That’s a good way to evaluate lots of stuff.
One way that kaspersky might not be safe enough for you, if it’s still a rebrand of hotspot which I haven’t confirmed, is that hotspot has offices in states where they can be compelled to install equipment and software to monitor throughput without notifying customers. That’s no big deal for Russians and Syrians because they’re still protected from those states actions by a bunch of layers of international law and whatnot. If you aren’t safe from, for example, the us government because you, for example, live in the us then it might not be the protection appropriate for you and your uses.
It’s one of those circumstances where at the very least a warrant canary would be good, but would also only provide certain assurances and would rely on the users awareness to function.
glad to see another fan of the “it all has backdoors, but opposing governenments can do a lot less harm with it” approach to cybersecurity
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ha jokes on them I have an inbox rule to forward everything to
support@kremlin.ru
Kaspersky:
Server speeds of up to 10 Gbps keep your devices running fast
Does this mean I have to browse through them at 10Gbps instead of the typical 100Gbps I get from my ISP? Seems a bit painful
100gbps is insane, I think you must have your numbers wrong. Either way 10gbps is more than adequate for doing anything
Oh lol yeah I meant 100Mbps I was typing that at 4am giga tired
*mega tired
Oh motherfucker PIA is the one I use
Thankfully the main reason I have it is just to steal video games but I’ll make sure that doesn’t renew
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.
there are too many eyes