A new report uncovers the troubling ties between top VPN services like ExpressVPN and the Israeli security state, raising alarms about how much control Israel’s Unit 8200 has over your online privacy.

“Kape Technologies is a major player in the online privacy world, one of the three giants that collectively control the market. It owns many of the world’s top VPNs, including ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, ZenMate, Intego Antivirus, and a host of tech websites that promote its products. Kape brands can be seen sponsoring a wide array of public figures, such as Tucker Carlson, Angry Video Game Nerd, Drew Gooden, Lex Fridman, Cody Ko, Uncle Roger, and Ben Shapiro.”

“(Kape Technologies) It also bought a host of VPN review sites, such as vpnMentor and Wizcase – platforms that purport to supply readers with expert information about which VPN would be best for them. vpnMentor insists that this considerable conflict of interest does not affect their ratings.”

What do you think of all this?

    • @unrushed233
      4•3 months ago

      You don’t control any VPN services hosted on someone else’s (e.g. a cloud provider’s) infrastructure. They have full access and can technically do anything. And they see your incoming and outgoing connections. This is stupid, and doesn’t give you any privacy benefit. There are good and trustworthy VPN providers like Mullvad, IVPN and Proton. Just acknowledge that.

      • @refalo@programming.dev
        4•3 months ago

        You don’t control any VPN services hosted on someone else’s (e.g. a cloud provider’s) infrastructure

        We must have very different definitions of “control”.

        They have full access and can technically do anything.

        You could say the same for anyone with physical access to a machine. But the people who have to worry about that likely aren’t reading this.

        And they see your incoming and outgoing connections.

        So does any bandwidth provider you pay money to.

        This is stupid, and doesn’t give you any privacy benefit.

        Highly debatable and subjective IMO

        There are good and trustworthy VPN providers

        Depends on your definition of trustworthy… some say it’s impossible to trust any company.