<story><title>PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy</title><url>https://telegra.ph/Private-Internet-Access-VPN-acquired-by-malware-business-founded-by-former-Israeli-spies-12-01</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rasengan</author><text>If you think a platform is responsible for what their developers do with it, then I understand. However, Kape was never directly involved in adware other than providing SDKs that let developers create positive and negative things.&lt;p&gt;To say Kape was involved in adware would be akin to saying the Wright Bros killed millions of people - because they made planes which people used to kill people (which is simply untrue).  Even the original article notes this ever so briefly so as not to show Kape positively.&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your trust until now, and given the long track record and relationship, I hope you can verify my statements as well.&lt;p&gt;Our future work will always be the same work we have been doing, so whether now or later, I&amp;#x27;m confident we will re-earn your trust again, and hope you&amp;#x27;ll give us the opportunity.</text></item><item><author>smsm42</author><text>Thank you for taking time to explain your position. I can appreciate the need for resources and why you think this deal is the right thing to do for your company. I&amp;#x27;ve trusted you company enough to use it for years and buy a multi-year subscription. Unfortunately, given the track record of Kape, I can&amp;#x27;t trust the bundle of Kape+PIA the way I trusted PIA alone. Maybe in the following years this trust will be accumulated, but right now, due to Kape history, it&amp;#x27;s below zero, drugged down by Kape&amp;#x27;s past. I understand all about new management and stuff, but adware alone is a business shady enough that steering clear of it in matters like VPN seems to be a basic prudence. And when malware added to the mix... as I said, trust level becomes negative. Good luck in your future work, hopefully your new combined company will accumulate the trust again, but I&amp;#x27;ll be using some other solution for now.</text></item><item><author>rasengan</author><text>This article and articles like this miscast Kape in an incorrect light. To be clear, in the past the company was known as CrossRider and provided a developer SDK that could be used to integrate with browsers. Unfortunately, CrossRider didn&amp;#x27;t do enough to prevent malware (like platforms these days and their fake news) and the platform was used by some bad people for bad purposes.&lt;p&gt;When the new management team of CrossRider took over, they immediately ceased to engage in the previous business and focused on the opposite due to the insights they gained watching nefarious developers abuse their platform.  With the focus on security and privacy, they changed their name to Kape and further the new company will be called Private Internet as it will be purely focused on privacy.&lt;p&gt;The merger between Kape and PIA affords PIA the resources needed to bring privacy to the mainstream.  The company can now be decentrally owned by the people, and public reporting requirements are much stronger than those for private companies. Couple this with a new random audit program we are going to launch and its as transparent as it gets, and it&amp;#x27;s exactly the direction we at PIA want to go, where our users no longer need to just trust us, instead our actions are and will continue to be verified.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the choice of VPN is yours, but transparency is verification and with most VPN companies being incredibly secretive about their operations, who is behind it, and where they are located, what they do with their funds, etc. I stand behind the move to bring more transparency to privacy.&lt;p&gt;The company has always practiced sustainable karma - wherein we do what&amp;#x27;s best for the people&amp;#x2F;what people want, and that allows us to make a living doing what we love; that&amp;#x27;s not going to change.&lt;p&gt;Sincerely,
Andrew - Co Founder PIA</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hncommenter13</author><text>Again, in the interests of historical accuracy, Crossrider did more than that. They actively provided monetization for traffic from installed apps.&lt;p&gt;I have in my email a post from longtime senior employee Yonatan Pesses to a LinkedIn group (then named &amp;quot;Downloadable Software Distribution &amp;amp; Monetization&amp;quot;) for people working in the pay-per-install space. It is dated Dec 5, 2014, and it reads:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Crossrider is offering an amazing monetization solution for your MAC traffic! Very easy implementation, with high user value!&lt;p&gt;Yonatan Pesses
Crossrider&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d say that is pretty clearly more than just an SDK.&lt;p&gt;I also gather Pesses has recently left Kape: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.is&amp;#x2F;QYtxD&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.is&amp;#x2F;QYtxD&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>PIA VPN to be acquired by malware company founded by former Israeli spy</title><url>https://telegra.ph/Private-Internet-Access-VPN-acquired-by-malware-business-founded-by-former-Israeli-spies-12-01</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rasengan</author><text>If you think a platform is responsible for what their developers do with it, then I understand. However, Kape was never directly involved in adware other than providing SDKs that let developers create positive and negative things.&lt;p&gt;To say Kape was involved in adware would be akin to saying the Wright Bros killed millions of people - because they made planes which people used to kill people (which is simply untrue).  Even the original article notes this ever so briefly so as not to show Kape positively.&lt;p&gt;Thank you for your trust until now, and given the long track record and relationship, I hope you can verify my statements as well.&lt;p&gt;Our future work will always be the same work we have been doing, so whether now or later, I&amp;#x27;m confident we will re-earn your trust again, and hope you&amp;#x27;ll give us the opportunity.</text></item><item><author>smsm42</author><text>Thank you for taking time to explain your position. I can appreciate the need for resources and why you think this deal is the right thing to do for your company. I&amp;#x27;ve trusted you company enough to use it for years and buy a multi-year subscription. Unfortunately, given the track record of Kape, I can&amp;#x27;t trust the bundle of Kape+PIA the way I trusted PIA alone. Maybe in the following years this trust will be accumulated, but right now, due to Kape history, it&amp;#x27;s below zero, drugged down by Kape&amp;#x27;s past. I understand all about new management and stuff, but adware alone is a business shady enough that steering clear of it in matters like VPN seems to be a basic prudence. And when malware added to the mix... as I said, trust level becomes negative. Good luck in your future work, hopefully your new combined company will accumulate the trust again, but I&amp;#x27;ll be using some other solution for now.</text></item><item><author>rasengan</author><text>This article and articles like this miscast Kape in an incorrect light. To be clear, in the past the company was known as CrossRider and provided a developer SDK that could be used to integrate with browsers. Unfortunately, CrossRider didn&amp;#x27;t do enough to prevent malware (like platforms these days and their fake news) and the platform was used by some bad people for bad purposes.&lt;p&gt;When the new management team of CrossRider took over, they immediately ceased to engage in the previous business and focused on the opposite due to the insights they gained watching nefarious developers abuse their platform.  With the focus on security and privacy, they changed their name to Kape and further the new company will be called Private Internet as it will be purely focused on privacy.&lt;p&gt;The merger between Kape and PIA affords PIA the resources needed to bring privacy to the mainstream.  The company can now be decentrally owned by the people, and public reporting requirements are much stronger than those for private companies. Couple this with a new random audit program we are going to launch and its as transparent as it gets, and it&amp;#x27;s exactly the direction we at PIA want to go, where our users no longer need to just trust us, instead our actions are and will continue to be verified.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the choice of VPN is yours, but transparency is verification and with most VPN companies being incredibly secretive about their operations, who is behind it, and where they are located, what they do with their funds, etc. I stand behind the move to bring more transparency to privacy.&lt;p&gt;The company has always practiced sustainable karma - wherein we do what&amp;#x27;s best for the people&amp;#x2F;what people want, and that allows us to make a living doing what we love; that&amp;#x27;s not going to change.&lt;p&gt;Sincerely,
Andrew - Co Founder PIA</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>warent</author><text>I didn&amp;#x27;t do any development on CrossRider so my understanding is pretty limited here, but it looks like it was just an SDK to build cross-browser extensions which a bunch of developers used to place ads, and then CrossRider caught all the blame for it.&lt;p&gt;To me this sounds like if people used Ionic or React Native to make spammy crappy apps and then people blamed those frameworks respectively. It wouldn&amp;#x27;t make any sense. It&amp;#x27;s the fault of the app developers or the platforms which distribute the app (e.g. the app store)&lt;p&gt;Am I missing something here? Did CrossRider have a storefront which actively promoted adware extensions? I&amp;#x27;m not able to find anything rationally explaining the amount of backlash and downvoting rasengan is getting.</text></comment>