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.
$120 a year, god damn. I used PIA because it was $80 for 3 years and because like 10 people can use the same account.
for others switching from PIA,
kaspersky is about $35 a year ($30 first year, then $45) for 5 devices
protonvpn $60 a year for 10 devices with the 2 year plan
Mullvad is $60ish a year for 5 devices (no port forwarding)
IVPN is $80 a year for 7 devices with 2 yr plan (no port forwarding)
I also was just looking, and that "reasonable price if you prepay for two years" nonsense is, well, nonsense. I ain't exactly looking to spend $120+ all at once while crossing my fingers in the hopes the service doesn't suck.
Kaspersky seems like a good move, the page is saying it renews at $40/yr which is only $10 more than my current provider. Only five devices is a shame, though.
I was leaving towards them too. I paid for two years of NordVPN and got a refund when it sucked ass, so I'm guessing other companies do that if it isn't great