Read my post in its entirety. I specifically gave a shout to Mullvad at the end there. :P
Nadya
joined 1 year ago
It can make such broad claims because it's entirely based on facts. VPN's are a trust-based system where the only evidence they don't keep logs prior to getting a court order is "Trust us bro" and, historically, more of these services have been found to actually be storing records (or legally must store 30/60 days worth depending on their country of origin) than not.
If you would like a more in-depth and thorough explanation as a technical breakdown for non-technical people there is this blog post or even this blog if the "TL;DR" explanation didn't cut it for you.
Regarding profit motives of VPN's - see also:
- https://www.skadligkod.se/vpn/the-trustworthy-of-vpn-review-sites-and-how-affiliate-programs-affects-their-opinion/
- https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/
Here's a real fun one!
This site: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/choosing-the-best-vpn-for-you/ was purchased and now redirects to this site: https://www.safetydetectives.com/best-vpns/
Safety Detectives was purchased by non-other than drum roll please. Kape Technologies. How do I know this? Well let's take a look at the Wayback Machine for TOPS.net.
What was the original claim?
You may have started your search for a VPN by looking for “VPN Reviews” in your search engine of choice. if you had, you would have gotten page upon page of what seem to be harmless review sites, top 10 or blog style reviews of different VPN services. You may even be coming here for confirmation of what you were told on those sites. The sites making these recommendations are, in almost every case, paid by the services they review and recommend.
Who owns PIA, ExpressVPN, and CyberGhost? The "best 3 VPN's" recommended by safetydetectives.com? Kape Technologies.
Why should this concern you?
We'll start with PIA's owner, Kape Technologies. Kape Technologies was formerly known as Crossrider before it was acquired by one Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire that has spent time in jail for insider trading. Crossrider itself never had that great a reputation itself, what with their primary product being a development platform through which they were frequently used by third parties to invade ad platforms to serve up malware, but whatever. Once acquired, the entire leadership structure was hollowed out, and the new Kape Technologies went on an acquisition spree. All of Kape's purchased review sites suggest Kape owned VPN's with "some consideration" given to Nord and Proton to maintain some kind of pretense at neutrality.
In short: Sagi is shady, his business is shady, and his business moves are shady, which makes the whole thing shady from top to bottom. Kape Technologies isn't the only company to go on an acquisition spree for VPN's either. Ask yourself why there is interest in consolidating VPN providers and how that data might be useful.
Every single modern VPN is a honeypot until proven otherwise. Mullvad is one of the few that has been able to prove otherwise.
I disagree: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29
For most people a VPS would be cheaper and meet their actual needs.
A small suggestion, only because using monthly prices sometimes makes things seem even cheaper than they are. Change it from $Monthly Cost to $Monthly Cost ($Annual Cost). For example instead of $11/mo for Apple Music it would be $11 ($132) and instead of $33 it would be $33 ($396).
Doing this caused me to re-evaluate a number of monthly subscriptions I had, find cheaper (sometimes even free/"good enough") alternatives. Other times it would make me realize I should update annual charges if it was available if it was something I planned to keep around anyway and the annual price was a good enough deal. It also causes you to re-evaluate which price tier you pay for. Like for Nitro - do you really need the extra perks for $84/yr or do you only actually care about emotes and slightly larger file uploads and the $3/mo Basic package would be good enough? Often times people go "Oh it's only $7/mo difference anyway" and get the better package but don't actually use the extra features they're paying for.
Please educate yourself on Tankies. They're a bunch of fascist genocide apologists that are quite literally as bad as Nazis. Similar hateful ideology, just as fascist, same tactics of mass genocide, and they believe they are morally correct in anything they do because they're anti-Capitalism and anti-Western nations.
It's a little more than "liking Stalin". Genocide is merely a means to an end in an effort to establish a Socialist nation and as long as it is helping progress towards a Socialist state then it is morally correct to do so in their world view.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_fascism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
E:
Tiananmen Square massacre? Never happened - that's Western propaganda.
The Uyghur genocide? Not a genocide - the Uyghur are religious extremists and deserve to be imprisoned. Please stop listening to Western propaganda.
Holodomor? More Western propaganda that never happened.
Hong Kong? They need to stop being children and accept that Hong Kong is part of China. The protests are anti-China propaganda being paid for by the US and Britain to make China look bad.
Russia is defending itself from Ukraine aggression and like always - Western nations are quick to interfere and turn it into anti-Russia propaganda.
Lemmy also has an issue of being developed and flagship instances ran by unironic Tankies. People are a lot slower to clue in on Tankies than Neo-Nazis because for some reason denying genocides as a hoax and Western propaganda works for Tankies in a way that denial of the Holocaust as a hoax and Jewish propaganda doesn't work for Nazis. It's funny because if the devs were Nazis nobody would touch Lemmy with a 20 foot pole. People are a lot more ignorant of Tankies and there is a big excuse of "So what? Just make your own Lemmy instance if it bothers you isn't that the point of Federation?" that wouldn't exist if the devs were Neo-Nazis rather than Tankies.
As long as they can closely control the narrative and keep the .ml (Marxist-Leninist) instances as the larger/flagship communities they'll hold sway over their part of their part of the Fediverse and can surround themselves with people who are as radical as they are or open to being radicalized. Those who control the trunk control the branches.
I don't know anything about ernest and I consider that a good thing because that means they don't already have a bad reputation as a political extremist. Which made Kbin the easy choice to make between the two federation alternatives to Reddit.
Accidentally posted too soon - wanted to touch on this bit.
Right now that’s what I’m doing but there’s always the looming fear of anything I buy being taken away if the service gets shut down.
Never trust a company to remain solvent. Always own your data and always own any media you care to own. They can revoke your right to view the media at any time - or they may lose rights to broadcast media. Very few companies last 20-30+ years, especially internet companies and when they inevitably shutdown you'll lose access to all of your data/media. Always keep local copies unless you don't care if you lose it or not.
I use a combination of Jellyfin (Video), Beets (Audio), Hydrus (images), and finally Obsidian (text files/notes).
Everything is extensively and accurately tagged. I'm a digital hoarder because I don't trust anyone to keep content available for any length of time. If I like something - I download it and tag it. I may only look at it once 7 years later but I'll be glad I did because 7 years later it doesn't even exist outside of my local copy or is much more difficult to find.
Some time over a decade ago a popular file host shut down and took a huge chunk of content with it - not only mine but a ton of bookmarks I had to other people's content. This made me realize the importance of having local backups of anything I care about or wish to share/reference at some point in the future. So now I operate my own file host and digitally hoard everything and anything that I might care about.
I'm sure there would be zero abuse of this functionality to harass pro or publicly out LGBT moderators and remove them from their positions.