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.
US seems to be pretty strict with it's IP laws, crazy stuff. I've seeded like a 100TB of data and never gotten anything from my ISP
in canada isps are obligated to pass on what IP holders accuse you of, but they don't actually do anything about it. the rights holders are the ones tracking torrents or whatever. i've torrented tons of music and movies and the only time i got an email was when i torrented the lady ghostbusters lol
ive heard that in the us an ISP can decide to stop providing service to you if you get too many tho
I believe the US works much the same way