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.<p>When the new management team of CrossRider took over, they immediately ceased to engage in the previous business and focused on the opposite due to the insights they gained watching nefarious developers abuse their platform. With the focus on security and privacy, they changed their name to Kape and further the new company will be called Private Internet as it will be purely focused on privacy.<p>The merger between Kape and PIA affords PIA the resources needed to bring privacy to the mainstream. The company can now be decentrally owned by the people, and public reporting requirements are much stronger than those for private companies. Couple this with a new random audit program we are going to launch and its as transparent as it gets, and it's exactly the direction we at PIA want to go, where our users no longer need to just trust us, instead our actions are and will continue to be verified.<p>Ultimately, the choice of VPN is yours, but transparency is verification and with most VPN companies being incredibly secretive about their operations, who is behind it, and where they are located, what they do with their funds, etc. I stand behind the move to bring more transparency to privacy.<p>The company has always practiced sustainable karma - wherein we do what's best for the people/what people want, and that allows us to make a living doing what we love; that's not going to change.<p>Sincerely,
Andrew - Co Founder PIA
Seems to me that the "spy" was doing mandatory military service when he was 18 in the Intelligence part of the army? It seems common for many Israeli technically minded teens to go into that or similar wings rather than the more on the ground units.<p>It was from 1995 to 1998 (that's 20 years ago now) before he was at University and is the first item in his work experience. And the length of the position is about the same as military service. I do not know his current age.
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?
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.<p>[1] <a href="https://mullvad.net/en/" rel="nofollow">https://mullvad.net/en/</a>
I've been trying to cancel/shorten my year subscription since this came out. This + hiring Mark Karpeles as CTO are a solid guarantee that my data isn't safe.<p>Sadly, they just have a stock response to everyone emailing which is grating.
Just a general question about VPN services in general. When they advertise that they have hundreds of servers in a dozen or so countries, is it even possible to think that they are able to secure all of that themselves? Surely some State actor with enough know-how is going to be able to hack into some of the servers, right?
Whether this is true or not isn’t really the point. The fact that it it’s even possible is a huge red flag for my use case / threat model.<p>It’s relatively easy, not to mention cheap (less than $10 per month) to spin up a streisand (0) instance and protect myself that way. As long as I keep my traffic encrypted, I can keep most / all of the vultures away that I’m concerned about.<p>Happy to walk anyone through it. Takes less than 30 minutes and it just works.<p>Edited to add link. Second edit to change reference # typo.<p>0. <a href="https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand</a>
For anyone displaced from their VPN by this... Not mine, but another HN user made a tool to automatically create a VPN instance on your choice of cloud provider.<p><a href="https://github.com/trailofbits/algo" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/trailofbits/algo</a>
I'd suggest anyone looking fo a new vpn to have a look at this site: <a href="https://thatoneprivacysite.net/#detailed-vpn-comparison" rel="nofollow">https://thatoneprivacysite.net/#detailed-vpn-comparison</a><p>It was recommended by privacytools.io in an article a few weeks ago as being one of the few sites that don't take money from vpn providers to list them.
It's not just PIA. Nord VPN, ProtonVPN, etc all have ties to or owned by shady companies.<p>It you want real anonymity, use tor. If you want to change your internet access location, lease a VPS, and set up OpenVPN/Wireguard on it.
This could do without the clickbait title. "former Israeli spy" is obviously trying to make you think of something nefarious, even though there are no details besides where they worked. I was in an intel unit when I was in the military, and there's a lot of general IT people, managers, etc. It's deliberately deceptive to label anyone who has ever worked at an intel agency as a "spy".
This is the most disappointing news that affects me personally that I've received this week. It's getting harder and harder to find tech companies you can trust, it seems. Just when things seem good, there's always a surprise waiting eventually.
This kind of seems like a national security concern, which the US government would want to block the acquisition. Given it's US company that has access to a ton on US traffic it's certainly reasonable that a state actor would want all that data.
Does a spy ever really become a former spy? From the outside, this reads as destroying PIA by providing user data to intelligence community, at a minimum. Perhaps even a play to get historical data.
It is worth mentioning a large portion of Israel talented IT youth is enlisted to intelligence technological units in IDF. So, every cyber company founded / hiring in Israel will almost always have people from those units. But, this is not such a big deal and definitely doesn't make them spies.
It occurs to me that you can buyout major top 20 productivity apps, browser plugins with just couple billion dollars, silently change Eula and have field day with personal data of large chunk of population. This is not a huge amount for governments.
> If that wasn’t enough, Crossrider’s Founder and first CEO Koby Menachemi, was part of Unit 8200 – something that can be called Israel’s NSA.<p>About half of my coworkers in Israeli game development companies have served there. Some wrote custom linux kernel modules, most did very low-level QA work, and in general had more or less the same skillset and level as any other coworker. Of course, they probably worked close to Stuxnet developers, but calling a typical kid, just out of his mandatory military service, a "spy" paints this in a completely different light.
I've relied on PIA for years and I'm 100% dropping them for good. They promise to never log, but that's clearly an empty promise. Their TOS says that they can change the terms at any time without notifying anyone. This new partnership with Kape is an intelligence operation with the 14 eyes. A spy never becomes a "former" spy. I love my country, but I love my rights as well, and I refuse to be surveilled illegally.
Previous thread: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21612488" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21612488</a><p>Edit: Sorry, I meant prequel thread as they're related but not the same.
I’ve been using PIA for years. Chose them over others because they were more well known and larger, which to me meant they’d be less susceptible to having to enter into shady activity. I’m trusting them with my traffic, after all. This one doesn’t sit well with me, it feels like a betrayal of trust. They have to know that people who signed up to use their service wouldn’t be okay with something like this if it’s as shady as it sounds. Good thing it’s still cyber Monday, I think there might be a few VPN deals going around. Maybe it won’t hurt to to try my luck with one of those.
What do people use these VPN services for? Is it mostly for pirating, or public wifi users, or people that don't want their ISPs to know what they're doing? It all seems like niche use cases.
As a general rule I have trusted PIA for years and I now trust your judgement in choosing a partner. Seriously I've considered all alternatives, other companies don't say anything about themselves; who owns the other VPN companies? couldn't find any info. Service has been great, price has been right. and I appreciate the honesty. The fact that you are here responding means a lot; and more than I can say for other companies.
Is there some sticky mechanism going on here or how is that raengan comment so far on top even with all those comments disagreeing with the content of it?
FWIW, if you want a VPN for protecting your traffic while you're out in the world, get a nice home router that provides VPN and dynamic dns support.
Uninstalled. Sub cancelled. They had to know there would be a massive backlash from this? I can see why the PIA execs wouldn't care -- they would get their payout from the sell regardless. But Kape either is oblivious or doesn't care if a non-trivial percentage of their customer base drops them. I am not sure which option worries me more?<p>Now I have to spend the next week researching VPN providers.
PIA also claimed they were going to release the code of their new Windows desktop client.<p>They did not.
They have not.<p>They lied.<p>They cannot be trusted.
<a href="https://www.privacytools.io/providers/vpn/" rel="nofollow">https://www.privacytools.io/providers/vpn/</a>
Looks like I'll be switching to Mullvad.
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/dhha6o/piaservice/f8oabnl?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/PrivateInternetAccess/comments/dhha...</a><p>Ha! After discovering that PIA runs a background process I posted that they were one evil change of ownership transaction away from fucking everyone.<p>Looks like they were way ahead of me.