Sometimes, sticking to just one or two apps might be better. I was thinking of posting this 2019 article about Private Internet Access, but decided against it because it was a little outdated and somewhat well-known… But a comment can’t hurt, right?
Kape Technologies was originally found under the name of Crossrider in 2011 developing advertising apps until they changed their name in 2018. However, their software was treated as malware by companies such as Malwarebytes and Symantec begging one to ask, how can such a company despite rebranding itself change the shoddy culture that it had?
But the connections don’t end there. The very first CEO of Crossrider, Koby Menachemi, happened to be once a part of Unit 8200 which is an Israeli Intelligence Unit in their military and has also been dubbed as “Israel’s NSA “. Teddy Sagi, one of the company’s investors was mentioned in the Panama Papers which were leaked in 2016.
https://www.hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sold-israel-privacy-concerns/
I agree. PIA is the only one I actually paid for and the one I’ve used the least. They’re only still on the list because I bought a 5 year block of time over 4 years ago when they had some big black Friday deal, so their app will soon be uninstalled. The rest are free or trials that I’ve been evaluating for performance. Thanks for the article, though.
I was in the same boat as you, I bought it before they sold out… But obviously you can’t return it at that point
A friend and former colleague in the IT industry recommended them to me so I gave some extra weight to his opinion. Then he lost like ten grand USD in Bitcoin because he left a (default) port forwarded to a VNC server in his house, open to the public and only protected by a known compromised password… and after that I stopped listening to anything he had to say about security.
Ouch, that hurts just reading it.
I’m suspicious of anyone overconfident like that. The pen-testers I know love to make examples of them.
TIL. I’ve been using PIA for years, looks like I’m going to cancel now.
