>The merger between Kape and PIA affords PIA the resources needed to bring privacy to the mainstream.
You were one of the most, if not the most successful VPN provider for years. Did you really need more resources? For what?
The main benefit of PIA is the expectation for extra privacy. No matter how you look at it, selling to Kape is a strong signal that's not a priority. Similar, for hiring Karpeles to do your security (like he hasnt lost us enough already).
> Similar, for hiring Karpeles to do your security (like he hasnt lost us enough already).
Wait... What?!! I just had to look this up[0]. How did I miss this news?
Now... I'm all for second chances in general, but there need to be limits, and my understanding of the MtGox case, is that on top of being responsible for terrible security practices, Karpales lied about the intrusions.
I was actually kinda on the fence before, even when my previously reliable connection stopped working yesterday (probably a coincidence) this makes me not really trust PIA's decision making, which is a real shame. I found the service very solid.
I actually subscribed to PIA before realising this, too. It's weird nobody else is even mentioning it in these threads - trusting a proven fraud like Karpeles for your privacy and security needs is a bit insane if you have other alternatives.
I didn't know that either. Here's a couple quotes from an article about how Mark ran MtGox:
> Beneath it all, some say, Mt. Gox was a disaster in waiting. ... A Tokyo-based software developer [says it] didn’t use any type of version control software [and] he says there was only one person who could approve changes to the site’s source code: Mark Karpeles. ... “The source code was a complete mess,” says one insider.
> The 1,719 lines of commented PHP code...include code to access individual customers’ Bitcoin wallets and to process transactions. ... Anyone who had access to the server running this code could have easily redirected transactions or pillaged the Bitcoin wallets.
Mark Karpeles defrauded a customer in France before he bought MtGox and moved to Japan. He was found guilty of fraud when tried in absentia because he skipped town and left. When MtGox was hacked and the hot wallet was wiped out, Mark didn't even bother to stop using a known compromised hot wallet. Over 3 years he never bothered to ever rotate keys for the hot wallet, even though he already knew it was compromised when it was wiped out in the original hack. Mark publicly touted how MtGox was using cold storage for 95% of all Bitcoins in MtGox at all times and that the keys for those Bitcoins were secured such that you needed to compromise two out of three geographically separate locations in order to rob the cold wallets. None of that was true, and Mark knew that the exchange was insolvent from the day he bought it.
His solution to the problem was to make a trading bot with an innovative new strategy of "buy high, sell low". That trading bot was something that he publicly denied multiple times and it wasn't funded with Bitcoins or dollars to trade, it just made trades without having any funds allocated to begin with. Even ignoring that the deposited funds were stolen the exchange didn't have any hope of being able to be solvent because the Willy bot just added funds to the exchange out of thin air. The charitable interpretation of Marks actions is that he was too incompetent to even realize that his trading bot was losing mountains of cash and too incompetent to realize that he was always draining cold wallets but never filling them back up and too incompetent to ever bother to run "SELECT SUM(BTC) FROM accounts". The only BTC left on the exchange was the cold wallet that was discovered afterwards because Mark Karpeles was so incompetent and cavalier with customer funds that he quite literally forgot about one of the cold wallets lying around with 200,000 BTC in it. If he hadn't forgot about that wallet, he would have kept dumping it in the hot wallet to let the thief siphon off and push the scam out another 6 months before it collapsed. Even at the point that withdrawals were frozen entirely and all of the money that Mark knew about was gone he still was spouting off B.S. about how it was transaction malleability, it's not our fault, your money's not gone we just have to fix this bug, etc.
PIA's business is built on trust and rasengan decided to hire Mark Karpeles as their CTO. I honestly can't think of anyone who I would trust less as a CTO than Mark Karpeles. I'm not being sarcastic, I genuinely can't think of someone as bad as Mark for a role like CTO. There's not a chance in hell that I'm going to give PIA another cent based on that alone, even ignoring the most recent Kape debacle.
> You were one of the most, if not the most successful VPN provider for years. Did you really need more resources? For what?
I don't know if you watch Twitch or YouTube but it seems that every streamer and video is sponsored by NordVPN. I feel like with that kind of advertising budget, it's going to be harder for companies that don't advertise as much.
There's a definite plus to bringing in people who've never used a VPN service before - a lot of them may subscribe but never actually become serious users of your service, in which case they're likely highly profitable. People who find you by reading reviews on TorrentFreak on the other hand are much more likely to chew bandwidth and possibly have multiple devices connected at once.
Yes, to bring freedom thru privacy to people, The coming battle against privacy and free speech is by far the strongest and worst yet; the narrative and our voices are quickly getting quashed.
Without the ability to communicate privately and speak freely, at best democracy is at risk; and at worst, humanity, or what it has meant to be human until now, itself may be at risk.
Divided we are not stronger.
> Similar, for hiring Karpeles to do your security (like he hasnt lost us enough already).
Cryptocurrency has come a long way, and without MtGox and Mark at the beginning, it may not have been able to make such strides.
I prefer a battle hardened individual over a clean track record of no experience. Failure is the fastest and strongest way to learn and grow stronger.
Overall, I appreciate your words and concerns, but I believe we are strategically moving in the right direction to the world's benefit.
>Yes, to bring freedom thru privacy to people, The coming battle against privacy and free speech is by far the strongest and worst yet; the narrative and our voices are quickly getting quashed.
>Without the ability to communicate privately and speak freely, at best democracy is at risk; and at worst, humanity, or what it has meant to be human until now, itself may be at risk.
>Divided we are not stronger
I was hoping for a real response, rather than the same empty marketing speak.
Of course, the real response is likely 'I wanted to cash out', so I understand why you can't deliver something more convincing.
Failure is not the fastest way to learn when that failure is achieved through fraud.
I was on the verge throughout all of these news, but now finding out about you hiring Karpeles and now reading how you defend it really made me cancel all the subscriptions and never come back again.
Agree. People that have no ethics or integrity tend to always revert to mean. People that I know that sell harmful products seem to have an uncanny ability to find ever more harmful ways of profiting.
"The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment" vibe is strong with this one. For the record, the part I quoted is from, I believe, most downvoted comment on reddit[0], currently on ~670 thousands of downvotes.
The company is now no longer controlled by one man alone, but instead many. I’m still a major shareholder.
We are changing the world by fighting in the front lines with our PR as we always did [1], donating to organizations without pause or hesitation [2], and sticking to our decisions even when the world may not understand as they aren’t deep in the battle like us.
Time will prove everything, and we will help the people (and freedom of speech and privacy) achieve victory.
Edit: Unable to reply below so I wanted to clarify - our ad spend often times goes toward the benefit of people as opposed to being direct ads about our company.
>We are changing the world by fighting in the front lines with our PR as we always did [1]
You are telling me you did it for PR reasons?? That's not even remotely believable - look at the 'PR' you are getting. This was the goal??
>donating to organizations without pause or hesitation [2]
Surely, you have even less of a voice where donations go than before.
>and sticking to our decisions even when the world may not understand as they aren’t deep in the battle like us.
How are they helping you stick to your decisions? You are making entirely new decisions now, and corroding your previous. Are you saying they are 'deep in the battle' like you? What?
Even as a user that for now will not be trusting PIA, I do applaud the advertising I've seen in many corners of the mainstream net trying to educate users about issues they otherwise would have no exposure at all to, unlike us.
I completely agree, I just don't see in what possible way does Kape help with that.
Even if they start doing more outreach (doubt Kape helps much there but say they do) now the messages are just going to be tainted with 'yeah, dont trust those guys' comments when a user looks into it.
would you mind to elaborate how a centralized VPN-service is helping against suppression of the internet as a channel? Once your DNS/servers are gone, your VPN is gone, thus your users have to fall back to metadata collection by their ISP instead of you...
P.S.: you are aware that you can still go into the next pub and speak freely with verified (e.g. drinking liquor) humans, which solves by far the biggest issue with "free speech" on todays internet in the "west"
Ok, but you're a VPN provider. When I use a VPN service I am simply moving my trust from the ISP to you. This decision (as well as hiring Karpelès, convicted for fraud) lowers my trust in you.
I am on a year sub with you guys. I don't buy the marketing speak you're spewing here and I doubt I'll be renewing.
You were one of the most, if not the most successful VPN provider for years. Did you really need more resources? For what?
The main benefit of PIA is the expectation for extra privacy. No matter how you look at it, selling to Kape is a strong signal that's not a priority. Similar, for hiring Karpeles to do your security (like he hasnt lost us enough already).