The phrase in the title is a common trope that comes up when VPN services are discussed. While this statement is technically correct, it can be misleading, as it implies that all providers handle law enforcement requests and prepare for worst case scenarios similarly, so their conduct cannot be a differentiating factor when you evaluate them.

It is something to always take into consideration and not forget.

  • Syn_Attck
    19·
    9 months ago

    IVPN servers are all well-known and catalogued. ExpressVPN partly buys hacked machines to user as proxies for their paid tier user VPNs, so they are much less likely to be blocked. They have a lot more… troubling history, that would make me never visit their download site.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/trust-but-verify-an-in-depth-analysis-of-expressvpns-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week/

    Kape Technologies has announced plans to acquire ExpressVPN for $986 million. I do have concerns about this because Kape was once considered a malware provider.

    Reuters indicating that ExpressVPN CIO Daniel Gericke is among three men fined $1.6 million by the US Department of Justice for hacking and spying on US citizens on behalf of the government of the UAE (United Arab Emirates).

    Kape Technologies has had quite a convoluted history. According to a report in Forbes, a company called Crossrider was formed in 2011 by “billionaire Teddy Sagi, a serial entrepreneur and ex-con who was jailed for insider trading in the 1990s. His biggest money maker to date is gambling software developer Playtech,” and Koby Menachemi.

    Menachemi was a developer for Unit 8200, an Israeli signals intelligence unit responsible for hacking and collecting data (think of it as part CIA, part NSA, and part high school, because the unit hires and trains teenagers in hacking and coding skills).

    the newly renamed Kape Technologies set out on an acquisition binge. The company started buying in 2017, acquiring CyberGhost VPN for about $9 million. Next, in 2018, came Mac antivirus company Intego for $16 million. A few months later, Kape gobbled up another VPN provider, ZenMate, for about $5 million. A year later, in 2019, Kape spent $95 million for Private Internet Access, one of the best known VPN providers at the time.

    There’s more to the story as well, but you can be sure that all your data is belong either being proxied by a botnet, or being used to spy on you. ‘I have nothing to hide!’ you may say, but I’m sure you have an app or two that still uses insecure HTTP update checks, which can be intercepted to trigger a malware installation.

    • kobra@lemm.ee
      1·
      9 months ago

      Appreciate the info. Do you have any recommendations for alternatives? I do see reports that NordVPN seems to work for mlb blackouts but nothing on mullvad, however I could trial them I suppose.

      Edit: tried mullvad and mlb.tv won’t even allow the login 😞

      • Syn_Attck
        1·
        9 months ago

        You’ll want a provider with a ton of servers. For bypassing service level blocks, either a VPN like Express with thousands of servers or your own VPN is the way to go. there are docker images for setting up a VPN on a $5 VPS.

        it depends on your risk tolerance. do you need to stay as anonymous as possible (with VPN as layer 1) or do you need to be able to watch shows in a different language? Mullvad and IVPN have a limited set of rented and owned servers that are setup for security and privacy. Express, Nord, and those less ethical VPNs don’t care about that, they just want as many cheap servers as they can possibly get.