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.

    • tree@lemmy.zip
      ·
      5 months ago

      Have you seen their mastodon account?

      https://home.speakfree.social/@torguard

      Surprised anyone in this instance would use their service since they use their social media account to more or less do NAFO posting.

      • lapis [fae/faer, comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        5 months ago

        That's interesting to know about, I guess. I signed up ages ago, on a lifetime $30/yr deal, so they'd have to do something genuinely evil for me to consider some service that's 2-4x the price.