Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Outcry over ExpressVPN ownership: What the Israeli connection means for user privacy (www.middleeasteye.net)

submitted 1 day ago by geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Social media users are calling for the mass cancellation of ExpressVPN subscriptions after it was revealed that a cybersecurity firm with Israeli ties owns the popular privacy service.

In 2021, The Times of Israel reported that Kape Technologies, a British-Israeli digital security company, acquired ExpressVPN, one of the world’s largest virtual private network (VPN) providers, for nearly $1bn.

The calls for cancellation intensified after social media users began circulating information about Teddy Sagi, the Israeli billionaire and owner of Kape Technologies. Many shared that in 2023, as reported by The Jerusalem Post, Sagi donated $1m to transport soldiers during the Israeli war on Gaza.

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[–] sifar@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

The thing is that 10 min search results in - trust all of them, trust none of them. A lot of folks also have affordability issues. So that makes this issue even more complex. When they turn a bit more "respected" forums they are told to "self host" or are given recommendations that they already knew of but couldn't afford. So the problem lives on. All this lead to shady and heavy marketing VPNs come to the front.

[–] DexterRSX@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Mullvad is cheaper than all the other options by far.

[–] sifar@lemmy.ml 1 points 16 hours ago

No, I am afraid it's not. Just because it has a clear one pricing doesn't make it cheaper. One barely buys a VPN for one or just seven months or so.

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Wouldn't self hosting a VPN make you even more identifiable though? Now instead of an generic ISP IP address that changes every few months all your traffic is from a single static IP from a single cloud instance. Not to mention you're now trading your ISP seeing everything to your VPS provider seeing everything (and not just the internet traffic, everything in your server including the keys used for the VPN transport). And if at any point the packets exiting your VPS ends up back on your own ISP's network, they now know it's you who generated them because no one else ever connects to that server. I feel like a public VPN service would have slightly more anonymity simply because you're not the only source of traffic.

[–] sifar@lemmy.ml 1 points 16 hours ago

I would assume that they mean 'VPN not for anonymity' when they say that. I agree with you though.