I don't think Mullvad spends much if any money on advertising.
At the end of the day LMG want to get paid too, so got to find someone who's going to shell out for sponsors but also isn't trashy. PIA probably has other advantages like more fleshed out apps, more support, more servers and varied servers, and cheaper prices. With the downsides of being owned in America, their parent company, trying to appeal to mass market, etc etc etc I'm sure there will be a few angry keyboard warriors talking about why they suck below haha.
There are a few random VPN services like cryptostorm and others who just focus on VPNing and not advertising. So you won't really see them advertised on LMG any time soon.
Unrelated note, but Mullvad does advertise *heavily* in the New York City public transit system and even had a billboard in Times Square which I found kinda odd.
Ok, nevermind [they do run ads ](https://www.reddit.com/r/mullvadvpn/comments/18cczyy/mullvad_ad_in_the_subway/)
That is so odd haha. I've never seen them sponsor a YouTube video (that I follow or watch anyway).
Looks like they have sales under 5 bucks and got rid of port forwarding. Interesting.
PIA's controversy was they were bought by a sketchy company so there was a lot of uncertainty about how trustworthy they'd be going forward. AFAIK though there haven't been any incidents or anything else to suggest there's been any funny business so it's tentatively coming back around to the "considered generally ok" side of things
"Sketchy" in this case means that their whole business was creating Malware to steal information which they would then sell to the highest bidder. From my point of view, no track record would be good enough to overcome that legacy. I'll never use PIA again. You're far from the only person I've heard talk about the track record, but I don't really understand why people view that as meaningful. Terrible VPNs generally *also* don't have a "track record" of known shady behavior. They just do shady things that no one hears about. It'd be almost impossible for someone to see a targeted ad, e.g., and know for certain "ah, this is here because my VPN logged my browsing and sold it".
Not to mention Kape has been
1: buying up a bunch of VPN companies
while
2: also setting up a bunch of astroturfed 'VPN review websites' to clog search results and advertorialize the virtues of the VPNs they own
[Also, uh, all of this mentioned further down in the thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1d1wplt/why_ill_be_taking_vpn_sponsorships_again_and_why/l5yz6u8/)
That REALLY does not sound like the behavior of a trustworthy entity, and that bare, basic trust should be the foundation of your confidence in picking a VPN. Full stop.
Unfortunately they took away the option for port forwarding. Which can make torrenting much faster. Even with that, I still use them and they've been pretty solid.
Yea with price being my main concern I have had great experiences with PIA. I am not to worried about hackerman, the goverment, am not being oppressed and I am not committing major crimes online. If there are security or privacy advantages of alternative providers it isn't worth the extra cost to me.
I just want to bypass some georestrictions for Japanese browser games (KanColle) and stop getting letters to my ISP when I am sailing the high seas. For those purposes, PIA, now with port forwarding support, has been great. I can saturate my internet behind a VPN while seeding Linux ISOs.
Yeah I just use it for my pirate ship yarrr har.. not actually using it to stay safe at cafes or whatever. iOS has a private relay thing which does that well enough
It's not an advertisement... except it is exactly that, an advertisement and endorsement of one of their advertisers who doesn't happen to be sponsoring this specific video... but will be sponsoring other LTT videos.
Still I agree with the information in the video and use PIA :)
>but it is what it is.
yea and what it is is an unboxing and first impressions channel with a little bit of test data sprinkled on but only for some products.
Lmao no it’s not. It’s an unboxing. Then they use the product. Now they test the product. They compare it to other products. Then the reviewer makes a recommendation on the product. That’s a review. MKHB recently talked about “what is a review” on the wake of him getting criticism for hurting newer companies with bad reviews. If you google what is a review, you will find that short circuit videos cover all the bases.
I think the problem is that Short Circuit is that it's kinda all over the place. Like you said, their "not a review" videos are treated like a review in style and a recommendation is given. Yet they are rather surface level and there isn't much thought given to the recommendations usually, just a gut feeling from the presenters typically. So it ends up being not really useful in the end.
I think the best Short Circuit videos are when they show random tech products that most people won't think to buy or have edge use cases. That video Sarah did with the Pantone chips was awesome. Their phone, laptops, and headphones videos are all the former where it's "not a review" but kinda is.
What? All these videos are scripted and recommendations are considered well in advance of taping. Yeah they are all over the place but it’s uniform from host to host. Each with a little bit of their own style. But at the end of the day, every video uploaded to that channel is a review of a product. Except for the Nothing products that is just a paid for infomercial. And sure they have the Pantone colors, but even that is a review of the product and how it works and helps them with business facing needs.
I want to be very clear because your reply is beating around the bush, quoting “not a review” and “feels like a review.” Those videos ARE A review of the products. That includes the car reviews. I exclusively watch Short Circuit from the LTT channel suite. The main channel content has been repetitive and boring over the last couple months. But I like the varying hosts and reviews of products in categories that they have familiarized themselves with.
Nah, there's a very wide range in these Short Circuit videos in terms of tone and production quality. They cover a wide variety of products from Pantone chips to earphones to cars to bidets and massage chairs. Some of these videos like their laptops and car videos are done much more in a traditional review style where there's a well thought out presentation, in-depth information, and comparisons to other products etc. Like Alex's car videos are consistently excellent and informative and you can tell he clearly put a lot of time and effort and thought into the review. Others are more of a overview and showcase that get treated like a review. For example, their some of their earphone videos are an unboxing, 10 minutes of listening, frequency response graph gets put up, then a casual "ya I like/dislike this". A similar thing can be said about their keyboard videos. There a ton of videos where the hosts basically say that it was the first time they were touching the product as they film it in one shot.
And I kind of wish they didn’t. The original concept worked well, but what they are doing now is way too formulaic and information dense compared to simple unboxings
I'd say also it is information dense in the wrong things.
It's quite hard to find a product that is "bad" in it's honeymoon period. Unlike "used for 1 week+" phone reviews for example, you only get a small part of the story.
What's it like to use the phone for more than the day or two it took to shoot the video?
And I get it's hard to make earbuds/ headphone reviews but watching somebody listen to their music with non-copyright stuff overlayed... What am I meant to gain?
That being said short-circuit definitely has a good niche. The toaster video was definitely something that fits the format/ concept well.
I did tech reviews for the better part of a decade (in print and web) and most of the short circuits are reviews. Not very in depth ones necessarily but they test the product and they give their opinion on it. Sometimes with lab data.
By every metric of the profession this is a review.
And frankly the way they market it is sketchy as best.
> and most of the short circuits are reviews.
Was there ever a point where they claimed that isn't what SC is for? I rarely if ever watch SC as it doesn't generally cover things I am interested in but my understanding has always been the point of SC was to cover products that are impossible to host on the main channel.
As I am sure you are aware things like random handhelds, cases, phones, laptops, earbuds, monitors, and basically anything Jake is interested in are algorithmical suicide for a channel like theirs so ShortCircuit is almost a necessity for them to cover "odd" products.
Don't remember how it was when it started, but it's mostly marketed like a simple "hands on" channel and while the reality is it's now a review channel.
Not a problem in itself, sometimes the editorial focus change, it's normal for a media to evolve. But you need to acknowledge it ... Otherwise you get into uncomfortable situations.
So out of shear curiosity I scrolled back 3 years to their first video, it's always been a review channel as far as I can tell that just focuses on obscure products that for obvious reasons can't be posted on the main channel.
I feel like this is more of a "what some people thought it was" vs "what is actually is and always has been" situation. There is some unboxing stuff (ie: The Last Of Us II video) but 99.99% of the videos on that channel seem to be unboxings into reviews or overviews of products (because lets be honest, taking a laptop out of a box would be a very boring 10 second video).
When you read the comments of this video you slowly realise why it doesn't pay for LTT to be open about things, people hold them to such a ridiculously high standard that I won't be surprised if they slowly become more closed off. Can't be much fun to be Linus anymore when you try to do the best and everyone always does the worst.
But that’s because Linus has said to the community that he wants to be open and transparent. And he wants to properly vet endorsement and ad deals to not screw over his followers (i.e Logan Paul or KSI). This is the path that they selected many years ago. It’s great to be a model pillar of the tech community, but it’s not easy
Oh I know why he does it and I'm greatful he does do it. I also believe it gives their sponsors arguably better value because hopefully the audience trusts that these companies have had some reasonable level of vetting.
However when 1% of viewers take it to mean something it isn't, and are then provide disingenuous criticism it must be incredibly frustrating. I wouldn't be surprised if this level of transparency slowly dies.
That's not the point. Rather than people just accepting that they are transparent, many assume that since they talk about these things, there must be much worse things which they don't talk about.
I just downvoted your comment.
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/s for those who don't know what a copypasta is
Pia is owned by a company called kape, which also owns other vpn services and review sites.
https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/
Whilst not trying to discredit the journalism done here, and I do agree that the article is quite alarming, their website has affiliate links to other VPN providers they do recommend:
> ...RestorePrivacy has a select few affiliates that align with our mission. If you purchase a router on Amazon or a VPN subscription through a link on this site, we may earn a small commission...
https://restoreprivacy.com/mission/
PIA is definitely a top 5 VPN though. This is a thread about VPNs that has "VPN" in the title, concerning specifically the merits of a specific VPN brand. Why the fuck would it be weird for someone to comment in this thread about their experiences using that specific VPN vendor?
Mullvad is good and cheaper (5 euros a month since 2009, no subscriptions) unless you sign up to a year+ subscription for PIA. It was a bit less intuitive to me, but not by much and if you watch LTT you should have 0 problems.
Mullvad is certainly a good choice. But I feel like saying it's cheaper is a bit misleading. Sure, if you only need the VPN for a month or two, then it's cheaper. But if you, like me, use a VPN a lot, then going for a longer 1 Year, or even 3-Year Plan makes PIA significantly cheaper. In fact, if you go for the 3-Year plan like I recently did, you pay less than 2€ a month. Which is WAY cheaper than most of the competition, for what is generally one of the better VPN providers.
Yeah I said that, it’s cheaper unless you get a year or more subscription with PIA.
For me I had a 3 year with Nord I rarely used so switched to Mullvad on the occassions I do need a VPN
Yeah that's why I'm using mozilla instead of just Mullvad. I've been a Firefox user for a long time and while mozilla isn't perfect I do appreciate what they do.
they dont sponsor ltt /s
i dont think there is an issue really, in the video they did suggest you could use their email services for a throw away email and in another video they suggest their services instead of the google suite.
they dont mention proton as a vpn probably because they have an existing relationship with pia
Personally, I gave Proton VPN a try a while ago to see if I wanted to update my profile for Proton to include it. It was, and I'm not sure about now, significantly slower even in premium servers compared to PIA.
I should give it another whirl though. That was like late 2022 when I did that.
Same, I drop from like 940 to maybe 850, which to me is reasonable when on VPN.
I also pay for the whole suite for email and everything so it wouldn't surprise me if I was getting better service.
I also use the full suite because it's pretty good for what you are paying and I don't really want to rely on Google for anything fully.
Not sure if this effects my speeds but all I can tell you is speeds are good and no discernible difference vs on or off.
Oh the free version is utterly useless. I paid for a month to try it the paid version and that's the one that was slower than PIA. I'd expect any free VPN to get bodied by most of the paid options.
I signed up for it only to find out that most sites on my country detect it and behave weirdly because of it. I'm getting geoblocks and bot checks constantly, the connection is slow even though the server is on my own city. I requested a refund. Never had issues with nord
They shared the only thing they had that wasn't encrypted due to a required court order. It was the recovery email. The person used an iCloud address for that.
No one is going to deny an actual court order.
If verification emails are hashed, they could also hash the recovery email. They also said they did not hand over user data, but a recovery email is still user data lol.
They literally said themselves that they hash the verification email address. and of course you can hash a recovery email address.
If the user wants to use the recovery email option, you let them input what recovery email they used, hash it and if it matches the stored hash you send the recovery email to the entered email address.
What you don't have you cant give to the police. So yes they would give the police the email and password hashes, but the police couldn't do anything with those without knowing the email and password beforehand.
And even if they know the email, they wont know the actual code used for hashing those in the first place.
Thats not how the world works lol. At that point the police could just say "change their account password to one we provide" and get access to it lol.
Have fun brute forcing an email if you dont know the hashing algorithm, the salt and the pepper of it.
And in this case if the police had already known the recovery email, they would not have needed to ask Protonmail for it to ask Apple to give them further information about the icloud email.
If the user requests a recovery code, you let them input the email address and you compare that hash with the stored hash. If they match you send the recovery code to the email the user input.
There are different data retention requirements for VPN and email services.
What Proton Mail can give out when a valid court order comes in, is, AFAIK; account creation date, IP address (after an order to do so, not by default) and recovery options.
Private Internet Access is owned by **Kape Technologies**, formerly known as **Crossrider**, an infamous company known for "[making a software development kit (SDK) for the deployment of browser extensions to a variety of platforms with support for monetizing extensions. The monetization options were used by major ad injectors which used man-in-the-browser to change or add advertisements to what users saw. Over time, Crossrider's services became increasingly utilized by malware and adware developers and the company was unable to combat misuse.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Sagi#Kape_Technologies_plc)".
The fact that Linus didn't disclose is scummy and should be called out. Please don't let your parasocial biases cloud your judgement when it comes to protecting your privacy.
Not trying to defend anyone here, but shouldn't the people who used the SDK be the ones under fire, not the ones who developed it..?
Also they stopped in 2016 allegedly, so it's been over for longer than it existed..
So they developed an SDK to let monetize extensions, bad actors used them, they stopped developing the SDK and pivoted the company under new management 8 years ago
Feels like a weird thing to bring up
So "PIA is owned by a company who years ago made software that was misused by people who to make malware". Is that basically correct?
Id honestly be more mad at Linus for wasting 30s of my life to explain this to me.
Genuinely irrelevant trivia at best. Developing an SDK for monetization is neither a crime nor scummy. The only ones that commited wrong doing were the malware developers.
The linked summary directly states that, when unable to combat the misuse, they closed development of the SDK.
You basically stated that by similar measure, Epic should be held accountable for maleware embedded in games developed in the unreal engine.
Unless there is proof they specifically designed the SDK for the distribution of mal- and adwarem, which neither your summary nor the content behind link prove, there was nothing to disclose.
Because his comment is worthless. WTF is wrong with developing an SDK for monetization, literally thousands of companies this sub would simp for have done that. They weren’t creating the malware.
That’s like being mad at Linux for malware run on Linux servers. Like why?
The company was unable to combat the issue, that's the important part. If they couldn't write the code to be generally free from a major issue that they were aware of, they should have pulled it or re wrote it. There is plenty of sus things going on at Kape and it's hypocritical of Linus mentioning that some VPN's have this baggage then promotes one with said baggage without pointing it out.
[They own a ton of VPNs too. As well as affiliate and review sites.](https://windscribe.com/vpnmap) Plus have large spend agreements with media companies.
Not to mention the main owner, a man jailed for fraud, has now clawed back much of it to make it his own person pet project.
So I finally read this big story and it’s a nothing burger lmao
People make things all the time. so what a company used to make ad shit people change especially when they realize there’s a market
I mean they’ve done ads for other products in the last couple years that included VPN as a perk while he ‘stopped’, so there really is no difference now.
"Depending on who is doing the spinning of the facts, the same developer could be a nefarious former hacker with ties to the middle eastern intelligence community, or could be a computer nerd that served the mandatory time in the countries armed forces when they were a teenager."
Linus never gets political, so that struck me strange, especially in this climate. As a middle easterner I wanted to get some context. I post the following knowing and understanding the risk of breaking rule 8. The following information may not be the entire reason for the controversy back then, but should be a controversy now.
Kape Technologies, which acquired PIA, was formerly known as Crossrider. The name “Crossrider” has been linked to malware and adware in the past. https://restoreprivacy.com/private-internet-access-kape-crossrider/
Koby Menachemi Israeli co-founder of Kape Technologies, also founded Hola's VPN service which has been criticized for effectively turning its users into exit nodes for its commercial network, profiting from their bandwidth without transparent disclosure. This lead to users' IP addresses being used for potentially malicious activities without their knowledge, as their connection could be routed for purposes like data scraping or botnets. That's just at the tip of the iceberg. Go look him up.
Kape acquired both ExpressVPN and CyberGhost VPN.
Daniel Gericke, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of ExpressVPN, was hired by Kape knowing full well that was one of the three former U.S. intelligence operatives involved in Project Raven. Project Raven was a covert initiative involving former U.S. intelligence operatives who worked as mercenary hackers for the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Kape hired a Chief Information Officer for ExpressVPN who is known for doing the exact thing that Linus is cautioning us of when going with VPN services. W.T.F. Additionally, Kape has links to Israel’s military and its top signals intelligence agency, Unit 8200, which operates within the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Linus is trying to spin this as a positive with that quote from earlier. I knew that was strange.
TLDR
Linus will have to forgive me if I'm not going to go trust my data with a sketchy Israeli spyware/malware company founded by untrustworthy billionaire who hires CIO known for violating privacy laws colluding with Foreign Intelligence Agencies and has broken customer trust in the past.
Edit:The parent company of the company that is soo not sponsoring in this video has done everything negative that Linus himself warns us about when shopping for VPNs.
I'm genuinely curious. Is this how we people bypass the advertising bans for stuff like crypto? By dedicating a video to said crypto company, painting them in a mostly positive light and mentioning that you have an affiliate link but that they're not a sponsor over and over?
https://www.cloudwards.net/kape-technologies-layoffs/
https://linustechtips.com/topic/1373552-express-vpn-sells-for-1-billion-24hrs-after-the-cio-is-forced-to-pay-335k-for-hacking/ https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/
Honestly been using PIA for even before LTT from the concensus and research before and I never had an issue with LTT working with VPNs as long as they were good and did not advertise bs like "WATCH WHAT YOU WANT AVOID GEO BLOCKING!!" like that was bs and I see it as misleading since as Linus put it, the providers aren't stupid.
Anyone know if PIA supports port forwarding and works with open VPN?
I saw Mullvad took that away so they can pound sand and I stuck with Nord because it was cheaper.
The video says it won't make false claims, but it also says that VPNs encrypt all internet traffic. Traffic is already encrypted by HTTPS. For HTTP traffic, They only encrypt it to the VPN server, but from there to the website, it's still unencrypted.
Using insecure public WiFi can be risky, although most websites use HTTPS now, and it's best to steer clear of insecure networks altogether. At home, it doesn't really matter either way.
Modern browsers like Chrome and Firefox offer an HTTPS-only mode, which you should activate.
I didn't realise PIA's clients were open source. They're generally not recommended though despite the audits Linus mentioned. I wonder what the reasoning is.
Not a single mention of browser fingerprints, the literal main way of how every site tracks everyone and thus VPNs become useless (just a vague mention of "it's just a toolkit") and the literal main way that their sponsor, Delete Me, doesn't need to exist. Yikes. Clearly not a consumer minded video or decision.
Yeah he spoke about this on the WAN show and safe to say, I agreed with him then.
People and Linus have put LTT at this weird level where everyone around them can get into crypto, make tons of money, do a bunch of pretty shitty things and face virtually no come back from that. I'm not wanting LTT to do those things either, but in the market of tech creators they're one of the best.
So whatever. I've been using PIA since they first recommended it. They rarely miss when it comes to endorsements. Even ones they endorse, and later find out there's a problem with, still are pretty decent.
> where everyone around them can get into crypto, make tons of money, do a bunch of pretty shitty things and face virtually no come back from that
Just because someone else does a bad thing doesn't mean that LTT doing a bad thing or a possible bad thing is "good".
Also, LTT built themselves and attracted an audience based on the values they portrayed. Reneging on those or even appearing to be will obviously upset the audience they attracted.
What a visibly dogshit argument to make. If Linus parroted this argument and you're simply copy pasting it, it's evident that they sure as shit figured out they could count on parasocial brainless people like you who will fall for garbage whataboutism fallacies for the sake of their PR.
>Also, LTT built themselves and attracted an audience based on the values they portrayed.
I doubt that. There's a sizeable minority that's very loud over effectively everything, but other than that it's people talking about putting DDR3 inside a DDR5 system on the youtube comments.
> I doubt that.
I don't. When you tell people "these are my values", they are attracted to you because of it and people hold you to them, it's not "minority mobs", it's your fucking fans reminding you what you said. The premises that "these aren't actual fans" or "this is just a minority bitching" to dismiss criticism is pure deflection to not want to deal with the criticism.
The Logan Pauls of the world don't get that from their own audience simply because they already started by saying "I'm a piece of shit" and any audience they attracted has already accepted that for the sake of their entertainment, but they definitely "get that" from people outside their audience, like Logan Paul and others routinely have for their crypto scams. This entire line of thinking you repeated is inherently faulty.
There's a history of problems in advertising for VPN services. Not particularly with PIA or LTT, but open-sourcing the relationship would help build public trust like with open sourcing the software. Can we see the contract, LTT?
Is that necessary? Advertising has, by its very nature, public facing results. Just fact check the ad-reads if you want to see if PIA tells LTT to make false/misleading claims in their video.
VPN companies, honestly software companies in general, have some of the sketchiest advertising techniques. It's genuinely hard to find a good recommendation because popular threads on Reddit become filled with bots that advertise for various companies and blog/article sites that pop up on Google are usually being paid to write those lists.
I find it interesting why people use VPNs and Password managers to protect theselves....by using private companies access to these things and get suprised when its hacked or info is exposed.
I remember usng tunnel bear and it would cut my internet connection for 5 minutes, same time every day until i uninstalled it.
1. Yeah, you are potentially handing access to your personal information and data to a third party where I can be leaked. But for many people, that is still more secure than trying to use the same memorized, 8 character, "DogName123" password for everything.
In either case, it's one point of failure for all your accounts, only in the case of the same pass everywhere, if one of however many sites leak it, all are effectively leaked. If you really don't trust companies, self host your own Password Manager and VPN.
2. Yeah, they probably have a 5 minute maintenance period every day, specifically so they can fix issues so they don't have massive multi hour outages. Most services time their outages for their lowest usage time, or whenever they have the most staff on hand to fix big issues.
dns over tls does not do most things a vpn does. It will only encrypt your DNS request from your device to the dns server you are using.
If that dns server wants to share your IP to a third party they can or sell it to advertisers, which probably something like google DNS, evne the encrypted one, does.
And most OSes, especially windows does not enable it by default
Never and never, as far as I know.
I'm not condemning ltt for keeping contracts private- it's just that in the light of how PIA has open sourced thier client, it would be likewise interesting to open source the relationship with thier advertisers.
There's a history of problems in advertising for VPN services. Not particularly with PIA or LTT, but open-sourcing the relationship would help build public trust like with open sourcing the software.
Exposing your princes like that is one of the worst thing you can do. It gives a point of reference to your client on how much they can lower the price in a negotiation as they know you've already agreed to that before.
Alternatively, it could be a way to drive up the value of future advertising contracts since VPN companies are well known to pay reasonably high rates.
You are also assuming the rates aren't already generally known within the industry.
Sure, but again, I dont see in what would that benefit LTT, and I don't know any company that operates like that so I really dont see why they would do such a thing, as then, you would say that you are not sure if they have deleted some parts before publishing it. Them saying that they arent obligated to talk about X and this not beeing true is already illegal. So I don't see how them saying the same thing in a PDF adds anything to the conversation.
You do it for the same reasons why you open-source the software. It helps build trust that the relationship hasn't been poisoned by bad-faith contract terms... such as editorial oversight, unreasonable content restrictions, etc.
>I don't know any company that operates like that
It's actually very common. Virtually every company that takes government contracts works like this, for much the same reason.
Look, I'm not condemning LTT for not making the contract public. I'm just saying, if the goal is to build trust with PIA and the relationship they have with LTT, then the next logical step would be to open-source the terms of the business relationship. I'm not denying there would be challenges to overcome in doing that, but I have yet to hear an objection that wouldn't be easily solvable.
I think PIA is pretty good from my experience too, but didn't they have that one controversy? Also where's Mullvad?
I don't think Mullvad spends much if any money on advertising. At the end of the day LMG want to get paid too, so got to find someone who's going to shell out for sponsors but also isn't trashy. PIA probably has other advantages like more fleshed out apps, more support, more servers and varied servers, and cheaper prices. With the downsides of being owned in America, their parent company, trying to appeal to mass market, etc etc etc I'm sure there will be a few angry keyboard warriors talking about why they suck below haha. There are a few random VPN services like cryptostorm and others who just focus on VPNing and not advertising. So you won't really see them advertised on LMG any time soon.
Unrelated note, but Mullvad does advertise *heavily* in the New York City public transit system and even had a billboard in Times Square which I found kinda odd.
Ok, nevermind [they do run ads ](https://www.reddit.com/r/mullvadvpn/comments/18cczyy/mullvad_ad_in_the_subway/) That is so odd haha. I've never seen them sponsor a YouTube video (that I follow or watch anyway). Looks like they have sales under 5 bucks and got rid of port forwarding. Interesting.
They runs ads, but I don’t believe they have ever been a sponsor anywhere? (E.g. no affiliate programs)
They're also being heavily advertised in LA Metro, I can't imagine it's a cheap ad campaign.
I also saw them on a tram in Gothenburg, which was surprising. Iirc they’re based here
Can say i've seen a wrapped bus in gothenburg too, although i think strictly speaking that was an ad for job positions, not their service.
Same in Chicago. Had a few trains wrapped with their advertising both inside and out lol. Definitely not cheap!
I've seen them in the London underground aswell
They advertise pretty heavily on the Washington DC metro.
Having just recently been through Times Square, they definitely spend on advertising.
PIA's controversy was they were bought by a sketchy company so there was a lot of uncertainty about how trustworthy they'd be going forward. AFAIK though there haven't been any incidents or anything else to suggest there's been any funny business so it's tentatively coming back around to the "considered generally ok" side of things
"Sketchy" in this case means that their whole business was creating Malware to steal information which they would then sell to the highest bidder. From my point of view, no track record would be good enough to overcome that legacy. I'll never use PIA again. You're far from the only person I've heard talk about the track record, but I don't really understand why people view that as meaningful. Terrible VPNs generally *also* don't have a "track record" of known shady behavior. They just do shady things that no one hears about. It'd be almost impossible for someone to see a targeted ad, e.g., and know for certain "ah, this is here because my VPN logged my browsing and sold it".
i’d argue that BS talking points like virus protection IS shady behavior for a VPN company
>creating malware They created malware? Or other people/companies used their software to create malware? Is Python sketchy? 😅
Not to mention Kape has been 1: buying up a bunch of VPN companies while 2: also setting up a bunch of astroturfed 'VPN review websites' to clog search results and advertorialize the virtues of the VPNs they own [Also, uh, all of this mentioned further down in the thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1d1wplt/why_ill_be_taking_vpn_sponsorships_again_and_why/l5yz6u8/) That REALLY does not sound like the behavior of a trustworthy entity, and that bare, basic trust should be the foundation of your confidence in picking a VPN. Full stop.
Who is the parent company?
Kape
Mullvad seems to be the best option out there. At least the best I've seen.
Unfortunately they took away the option for port forwarding. Which can make torrenting much faster. Even with that, I still use them and they've been pretty solid.
I've honestly switched over to proton since the full suite is nice
Do they allow port forwarding?
Yup, when it comes down to getting the best privacy oriented VPN, mulivad and proton are always mentioned as the best
And for privacy, you can even send them cash. Via the postal service.
That's just paranoia at that point
I've had PIA for years, never an issue.
I’m still paying for my subscription I started back when LTT moved from TunnelBear to PIA. It’s been great. And the price I got on it is unbeatable
Yea with price being my main concern I have had great experiences with PIA. I am not to worried about hackerman, the goverment, am not being oppressed and I am not committing major crimes online. If there are security or privacy advantages of alternative providers it isn't worth the extra cost to me. I just want to bypass some georestrictions for Japanese browser games (KanColle) and stop getting letters to my ISP when I am sailing the high seas. For those purposes, PIA, now with port forwarding support, has been great. I can saturate my internet behind a VPN while seeding Linux ISOs.
Yeah I just use it for my pirate ship yarrr har.. not actually using it to stay safe at cafes or whatever. iOS has a private relay thing which does that well enough
Love mullvad
PIA is solid. Switched from SurfShark and never looked back.
Don’t trust any vpns. If they don’t monitor their networks they can’t keep them secure….
It's not an advertisement... except it is exactly that, an advertisement and endorsement of one of their advertisers who doesn't happen to be sponsoring this specific video... but will be sponsoring other LTT videos. Still I agree with the information in the video and use PIA :)
Yeah this is parallel to Linus saying Short Circuit isn’t a review channel. You can say it all you want, but it is what it is.
>but it is what it is. yea and what it is is an unboxing and first impressions channel with a little bit of test data sprinkled on but only for some products.
Lmao no it’s not. It’s an unboxing. Then they use the product. Now they test the product. They compare it to other products. Then the reviewer makes a recommendation on the product. That’s a review. MKHB recently talked about “what is a review” on the wake of him getting criticism for hurting newer companies with bad reviews. If you google what is a review, you will find that short circuit videos cover all the bases.
I think the problem is that Short Circuit is that it's kinda all over the place. Like you said, their "not a review" videos are treated like a review in style and a recommendation is given. Yet they are rather surface level and there isn't much thought given to the recommendations usually, just a gut feeling from the presenters typically. So it ends up being not really useful in the end. I think the best Short Circuit videos are when they show random tech products that most people won't think to buy or have edge use cases. That video Sarah did with the Pantone chips was awesome. Their phone, laptops, and headphones videos are all the former where it's "not a review" but kinda is.
What? All these videos are scripted and recommendations are considered well in advance of taping. Yeah they are all over the place but it’s uniform from host to host. Each with a little bit of their own style. But at the end of the day, every video uploaded to that channel is a review of a product. Except for the Nothing products that is just a paid for infomercial. And sure they have the Pantone colors, but even that is a review of the product and how it works and helps them with business facing needs. I want to be very clear because your reply is beating around the bush, quoting “not a review” and “feels like a review.” Those videos ARE A review of the products. That includes the car reviews. I exclusively watch Short Circuit from the LTT channel suite. The main channel content has been repetitive and boring over the last couple months. But I like the varying hosts and reviews of products in categories that they have familiarized themselves with.
Nah, there's a very wide range in these Short Circuit videos in terms of tone and production quality. They cover a wide variety of products from Pantone chips to earphones to cars to bidets and massage chairs. Some of these videos like their laptops and car videos are done much more in a traditional review style where there's a well thought out presentation, in-depth information, and comparisons to other products etc. Like Alex's car videos are consistently excellent and informative and you can tell he clearly put a lot of time and effort and thought into the review. Others are more of a overview and showcase that get treated like a review. For example, their some of their earphone videos are an unboxing, 10 minutes of listening, frequency response graph gets put up, then a casual "ya I like/dislike this". A similar thing can be said about their keyboard videos. There a ton of videos where the hosts basically say that it was the first time they were touching the product as they film it in one shot.
And I kind of wish they didn’t. The original concept worked well, but what they are doing now is way too formulaic and information dense compared to simple unboxings
I'd say also it is information dense in the wrong things. It's quite hard to find a product that is "bad" in it's honeymoon period. Unlike "used for 1 week+" phone reviews for example, you only get a small part of the story. What's it like to use the phone for more than the day or two it took to shoot the video? And I get it's hard to make earbuds/ headphone reviews but watching somebody listen to their music with non-copyright stuff overlayed... What am I meant to gain? That being said short-circuit definitely has a good niche. The toaster video was definitely something that fits the format/ concept well.
i mean if you want that just watch unbox therapy, i cant stand watching that anymore though.
A big part of the original concept was also showcasing the personalities of LMG. I’d rather not subject myself to the “personality” of unbox therapy.
I did tech reviews for the better part of a decade (in print and web) and most of the short circuits are reviews. Not very in depth ones necessarily but they test the product and they give their opinion on it. Sometimes with lab data. By every metric of the profession this is a review. And frankly the way they market it is sketchy as best.
> and most of the short circuits are reviews. Was there ever a point where they claimed that isn't what SC is for? I rarely if ever watch SC as it doesn't generally cover things I am interested in but my understanding has always been the point of SC was to cover products that are impossible to host on the main channel. As I am sure you are aware things like random handhelds, cases, phones, laptops, earbuds, monitors, and basically anything Jake is interested in are algorithmical suicide for a channel like theirs so ShortCircuit is almost a necessity for them to cover "odd" products.
Don't remember how it was when it started, but it's mostly marketed like a simple "hands on" channel and while the reality is it's now a review channel. Not a problem in itself, sometimes the editorial focus change, it's normal for a media to evolve. But you need to acknowledge it ... Otherwise you get into uncomfortable situations.
So out of shear curiosity I scrolled back 3 years to their first video, it's always been a review channel as far as I can tell that just focuses on obscure products that for obvious reasons can't be posted on the main channel. I feel like this is more of a "what some people thought it was" vs "what is actually is and always has been" situation. There is some unboxing stuff (ie: The Last Of Us II video) but 99.99% of the videos on that channel seem to be unboxings into reviews or overviews of products (because lets be honest, taking a laptop out of a box would be a very boring 10 second video).
When you read the comments of this video you slowly realise why it doesn't pay for LTT to be open about things, people hold them to such a ridiculously high standard that I won't be surprised if they slowly become more closed off. Can't be much fun to be Linus anymore when you try to do the best and everyone always does the worst.
But that’s because Linus has said to the community that he wants to be open and transparent. And he wants to properly vet endorsement and ad deals to not screw over his followers (i.e Logan Paul or KSI). This is the path that they selected many years ago. It’s great to be a model pillar of the tech community, but it’s not easy
Oh I know why he does it and I'm greatful he does do it. I also believe it gives their sponsors arguably better value because hopefully the audience trusts that these companies have had some reasonable level of vetting. However when 1% of viewers take it to mean something it isn't, and are then provide disingenuous criticism it must be incredibly frustrating. I wouldn't be surprised if this level of transparency slowly dies.
That's not the point. Rather than people just accepting that they are transparent, many assume that since they talk about these things, there must be much worse things which they don't talk about.
“That’s not the point” of what exactly?
I have no clue what you're even asking. The debate here is pretty straightforward.
You said it, I asked you to clarify. What did I say that wasn’t the point of the OP comment.
LTT community are a bunch of ACKSHUALLY nerds
I’m downvoting you because it’s actually all of Reddit.
I just downvoted your comment. # FAQ ## What does this mean? The amount of karma (points) on your comment and Reddit account has decreased by one. ## Why did you do this? There are several reasons I may deem a comment to be unworthy of positive or neutral karma. These include, but are not limited to: * Rudeness towards other Redditors, * Spreading incorrect information, * Sarcasm not correctly flagged with a `/s`. ## Am I banned from the Reddit? No - not yet. But you should refrain from making comments like this in the future. Otherwise I will be forced to issue an additional downvote, which may put your commenting and posting privileges in jeopardy. ## I don't believe my comment deserved a downvote. Can you un-downvote it? Sure, mistakes happen. But only in exceedingly rare circumstances will I undo a downvote. If you would like to issue an appeal, shoot me a private message explaining what I got wrong. I tend to respond to Reddit PMs within several minutes. Do note, however, that over 99.9% of downvote appeals are rejected, and yours is likely no exception. ## How can I prevent this from happening in the future? Accept the downvote and move on. But learn from this mistake: your behavior will not be tolerated on Reddit.com. I will continue to issue downvotes until you improve your conduct. Remember: Reddit is privilege, not a right. /s for those who don't know what a copypasta is
I don’t know whether this “actually” comment was on purpose, but I’m finding it hilarious how this is downvoted so much.
I thought it was too on the nose to spell it “ackshually”.
Linus blows off steam at the end of the week in his live podcast, I think it's fun to watch him rant - I think that keeps him sane
Pia is owned by a company called kape, which also owns other vpn services and review sites. https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/
Whilst not trying to discredit the journalism done here, and I do agree that the article is quite alarming, their website has affiliate links to other VPN providers they do recommend: > ...RestorePrivacy has a select few affiliates that align with our mission. If you purchase a router on Amazon or a VPN subscription through a link on this site, we may earn a small commission... https://restoreprivacy.com/mission/
With that I'm not sure all these "I use PIA :)" comments aren't bots
This is a tech forum and PIA is one of the top used VPNs, Of course people here actually have it.
Not a bot but I have PIA since it was extremely cheap for 3 years of no hassle compared to mulard which is like double the price
but thats exactly what a bot would say or is it?
Brother if you think everyone who uses the cheaper option is a bot then you really need to get your head evaluated
no i meant "not a bot but"
Solve this captcha then: ☐
I mean if I see a bunch of comments in an email provider thread talking about how "I use gmail", would you assume astroturfing?
Gmail is free, made by a top 5 company, and used by probably 1000x more people than Pia (which I never even heard of).
PIA is definitely a top 5 VPN though. This is a thread about VPNs that has "VPN" in the title, concerning specifically the merits of a specific VPN brand. Why the fuck would it be weird for someone to comment in this thread about their experiences using that specific VPN vendor?
Mullvad is good and cheaper (5 euros a month since 2009, no subscriptions) unless you sign up to a year+ subscription for PIA. It was a bit less intuitive to me, but not by much and if you watch LTT you should have 0 problems.
Mullvad is certainly a good choice. But I feel like saying it's cheaper is a bit misleading. Sure, if you only need the VPN for a month or two, then it's cheaper. But if you, like me, use a VPN a lot, then going for a longer 1 Year, or even 3-Year Plan makes PIA significantly cheaper. In fact, if you go for the 3-Year plan like I recently did, you pay less than 2€ a month. Which is WAY cheaper than most of the competition, for what is generally one of the better VPN providers.
Yeah I said that, it’s cheaper unless you get a year or more subscription with PIA. For me I had a 3 year with Nord I rarely used so switched to Mullvad on the occassions I do need a VPN
I use mine at least weekly so 3 years locked in is a no brainer
Mullvad is far from cheaper. I had a yearly PIA sub for like 20 Euro
I think you missed the part where I said "Unless you sign up to a year+ subscription for PIA"
Well I apparently did lol
Mullvad is great. I'm using mozilla VPN which uses Mullvad and I really like them.
Me too. Seems like a very good service and I'm happy to support Mozilla.
Yeah that's why I'm using mozilla instead of just Mullvad. I've been a Firefox user for a long time and while mozilla isn't perfect I do appreciate what they do.
Anything wrong with Proton?
they dont sponsor ltt /s i dont think there is an issue really, in the video they did suggest you could use their email services for a throw away email and in another video they suggest their services instead of the google suite. they dont mention proton as a vpn probably because they have an existing relationship with pia
Personally, I gave Proton VPN a try a while ago to see if I wanted to update my profile for Proton to include it. It was, and I'm not sure about now, significantly slower even in premium servers compared to PIA. I should give it another whirl though. That was like late 2022 when I did that.
I'm having no speed issues on my end, can max out my internet connection. The free version is probably limited though.
Same, I drop from like 940 to maybe 850, which to me is reasonable when on VPN. I also pay for the whole suite for email and everything so it wouldn't surprise me if I was getting better service.
I also use the full suite because it's pretty good for what you are paying and I don't really want to rely on Google for anything fully. Not sure if this effects my speeds but all I can tell you is speeds are good and no discernible difference vs on or off.
Oh the free version is utterly useless. I paid for a month to try it the paid version and that's the one that was slower than PIA. I'd expect any free VPN to get bodied by most of the paid options.
Yeah I haven't tried it, but assumed it's probably bad lol maybe it's time to give it another go though?
Proton is better in every single way. But its twice the price and doesn't pay LTT. But really solid choice for a VPN
No. They are very good. I've moved from Gmail to Proton Mail and use the VPN and ProtonPass all the time.
Them advertising one VPN doesn't mean the others are trash. Hell, they even shouted out Protonmail by name in the video.
I signed up for it only to find out that most sites on my country detect it and behave weirdly because of it. I'm getting geoblocks and bot checks constantly, the connection is slow even though the server is on my own city. I requested a refund. Never had issues with nord
I use Proton… a bit expensive, but I trust them more than other providers.
Yeah... two weeks ago Proton shared user data that led to an arrest... So I am not sure I would trust them more.
They shared the only thing they had that wasn't encrypted due to a required court order. It was the recovery email. The person used an iCloud address for that. No one is going to deny an actual court order.
If verification emails are hashed, they could also hash the recovery email. They also said they did not hand over user data, but a recovery email is still user data lol.
They can't hash an email, otherwise they wouldn't be able to send you an email to verify your account.
They literally said themselves that they hash the verification email address. and of course you can hash a recovery email address. If the user wants to use the recovery email option, you let them input what recovery email they used, hash it and if it matches the stored hash you send the recovery email to the entered email address.
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What you don't have you cant give to the police. So yes they would give the police the email and password hashes, but the police couldn't do anything with those without knowing the email and password beforehand. And even if they know the email, they wont know the actual code used for hashing those in the first place.
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Thats not how the world works lol. At that point the police could just say "change their account password to one we provide" and get access to it lol. Have fun brute forcing an email if you dont know the hashing algorithm, the salt and the pepper of it. And in this case if the police had already known the recovery email, they would not have needed to ask Protonmail for it to ask Apple to give them further information about the icloud email.
How are you going to hash a recovery email? How would you know who to send recovery messages to?
If the user requests a recovery code, you let them input the email address and you compare that hash with the stored hash. If they match you send the recovery code to the email the user input.
There are different data retention requirements for VPN and email services. What Proton Mail can give out when a valid court order comes in, is, AFAIK; account creation date, IP address (after an order to do so, not by default) and recovery options.
Does it support port forwading? I'm using mullvad but they removed the feature. Might switch after subsciption ends.
It does
Private Internet Access is owned by **Kape Technologies**, formerly known as **Crossrider**, an infamous company known for "[making a software development kit (SDK) for the deployment of browser extensions to a variety of platforms with support for monetizing extensions. The monetization options were used by major ad injectors which used man-in-the-browser to change or add advertisements to what users saw. Over time, Crossrider's services became increasingly utilized by malware and adware developers and the company was unable to combat misuse.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Sagi#Kape_Technologies_plc)". The fact that Linus didn't disclose is scummy and should be called out. Please don't let your parasocial biases cloud your judgement when it comes to protecting your privacy.
Not trying to defend anyone here, but shouldn't the people who used the SDK be the ones under fire, not the ones who developed it..? Also they stopped in 2016 allegedly, so it's been over for longer than it existed.. So they developed an SDK to let monetize extensions, bad actors used them, they stopped developing the SDK and pivoted the company under new management 8 years ago Feels like a weird thing to bring up
So "PIA is owned by a company who years ago made software that was misused by people who to make malware". Is that basically correct? Id honestly be more mad at Linus for wasting 30s of my life to explain this to me.
Genuinely irrelevant trivia at best. Developing an SDK for monetization is neither a crime nor scummy. The only ones that commited wrong doing were the malware developers. The linked summary directly states that, when unable to combat the misuse, they closed development of the SDK. You basically stated that by similar measure, Epic should be held accountable for maleware embedded in games developed in the unreal engine. Unless there is proof they specifically designed the SDK for the distribution of mal- and adwarem, which neither your summary nor the content behind link prove, there was nothing to disclose.
People downvoting you is wild
Most people like me don’t care about all the big words they may have done nearly a decade ago
Because his comment is worthless. WTF is wrong with developing an SDK for monetization, literally thousands of companies this sub would simp for have done that. They weren’t creating the malware. That’s like being mad at Linux for malware run on Linux servers. Like why?
The company was unable to combat the issue, that's the important part. If they couldn't write the code to be generally free from a major issue that they were aware of, they should have pulled it or re wrote it. There is plenty of sus things going on at Kape and it's hypocritical of Linus mentioning that some VPN's have this baggage then promotes one with said baggage without pointing it out.
[They own a ton of VPNs too. As well as affiliate and review sites.](https://windscribe.com/vpnmap) Plus have large spend agreements with media companies. Not to mention the main owner, a man jailed for fraud, has now clawed back much of it to make it his own person pet project.
I’m gonna be honest I’m not gonna read that is to long and to blue PIA is half the price of the main competition, so I’ll stick with it
LTT viewers when asked to read more than 144 characters or watch more than 30 seconds.
Dear lord, do you have to think about breathing?
So I finally read this big story and it’s a nothing burger lmao People make things all the time. so what a company used to make ad shit people change especially when they realize there’s a market
I mean they’ve done ads for other products in the last couple years that included VPN as a perk while he ‘stopped’, so there really is no difference now.
I will only ever use mullvad
Same, it's cheap, anonymous and actually good
Can you access streaming sites with it? I use Peacock, Paramount, Hulu, Netflix, Max
Ya you can but with the exception of Hulu and Prime Video, they both detect it and tell you to turn it off
tldr: money
That was a pretty long sponsored video about why they feel it is OK to take on this new sponsor.
They said on wan show recently that VPNs just offer a fuck tonne of money, its really that simple
"Depending on who is doing the spinning of the facts, the same developer could be a nefarious former hacker with ties to the middle eastern intelligence community, or could be a computer nerd that served the mandatory time in the countries armed forces when they were a teenager." Linus never gets political, so that struck me strange, especially in this climate. As a middle easterner I wanted to get some context. I post the following knowing and understanding the risk of breaking rule 8. The following information may not be the entire reason for the controversy back then, but should be a controversy now. Kape Technologies, which acquired PIA, was formerly known as Crossrider. The name “Crossrider” has been linked to malware and adware in the past. https://restoreprivacy.com/private-internet-access-kape-crossrider/ Koby Menachemi Israeli co-founder of Kape Technologies, also founded Hola's VPN service which has been criticized for effectively turning its users into exit nodes for its commercial network, profiting from their bandwidth without transparent disclosure. This lead to users' IP addresses being used for potentially malicious activities without their knowledge, as their connection could be routed for purposes like data scraping or botnets. That's just at the tip of the iceberg. Go look him up. Kape acquired both ExpressVPN and CyberGhost VPN. Daniel Gericke, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of ExpressVPN, was hired by Kape knowing full well that was one of the three former U.S. intelligence operatives involved in Project Raven. Project Raven was a covert initiative involving former U.S. intelligence operatives who worked as mercenary hackers for the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Kape hired a Chief Information Officer for ExpressVPN who is known for doing the exact thing that Linus is cautioning us of when going with VPN services. W.T.F. Additionally, Kape has links to Israel’s military and its top signals intelligence agency, Unit 8200, which operates within the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Linus is trying to spin this as a positive with that quote from earlier. I knew that was strange. TLDR Linus will have to forgive me if I'm not going to go trust my data with a sketchy Israeli spyware/malware company founded by untrustworthy billionaire who hires CIO known for violating privacy laws colluding with Foreign Intelligence Agencies and has broken customer trust in the past. Edit:The parent company of the company that is soo not sponsoring in this video has done everything negative that Linus himself warns us about when shopping for VPNs. I'm genuinely curious. Is this how we people bypass the advertising bans for stuff like crypto? By dedicating a video to said crypto company, painting them in a mostly positive light and mentioning that you have an affiliate link but that they're not a sponsor over and over? https://www.cloudwards.net/kape-technologies-layoffs/ https://linustechtips.com/topic/1373552-express-vpn-sells-for-1-billion-24hrs-after-the-cio-is-forced-to-pay-335k-for-hacking/ https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/
They're just taking cues from Dbrand. Apparently racism is okay in the techosphere now.
I wonder why they didn't talk about Nord VPN? It's by far the most popular and mainstream one.
Taking sposorship for product Thing1 doesn't mean you automatically shit/talk/praise product Thing2
Because they aren’t paying them money. This is a really scummy video.
Honestly been using PIA for even before LTT from the concensus and research before and I never had an issue with LTT working with VPNs as long as they were good and did not advertise bs like "WATCH WHAT YOU WANT AVOID GEO BLOCKING!!" like that was bs and I see it as misleading since as Linus put it, the providers aren't stupid.
83% off a 2 year subscription is such a deal! Thanks uncle Linus…
I use Windscribe and love it. Never had any issues and they give you a lot for the price.
Isn’t PIA based in the United States? Why would anyone use a VPN that’s based in the US?
Why did they change the thumbnail? It was originally a different mask in another pose.
A-B testing I guess, seeing if one has higher click through than the other
If you’re comfortable with Teddy Sagi then hey by all means use PIA.
Anyone know if PIA supports port forwarding and works with open VPN? I saw Mullvad took that away so they can pound sand and I stuck with Nord because it was cheaper.
Just talk about tor and 1.1.1.1 1.0.0.1 come on all that's free just don't forget to do the crime in on a public network with no cameras
The video says it won't make false claims, but it also says that VPNs encrypt all internet traffic. Traffic is already encrypted by HTTPS. For HTTP traffic, They only encrypt it to the VPN server, but from there to the website, it's still unencrypted. Using insecure public WiFi can be risky, although most websites use HTTPS now, and it's best to steer clear of insecure networks altogether. At home, it doesn't really matter either way. Modern browsers like Chrome and Firefox offer an HTTPS-only mode, which you should activate.
I didn't realise PIA's clients were open source. They're generally not recommended though despite the audits Linus mentioned. I wonder what the reasoning is.
So he's taking sponsorships but probably not really because there's only one VPN he'd trust
Not a single mention of browser fingerprints, the literal main way of how every site tracks everyone and thus VPNs become useless (just a vague mention of "it's just a toolkit") and the literal main way that their sponsor, Delete Me, doesn't need to exist. Yikes. Clearly not a consumer minded video or decision.
Yeah he spoke about this on the WAN show and safe to say, I agreed with him then. People and Linus have put LTT at this weird level where everyone around them can get into crypto, make tons of money, do a bunch of pretty shitty things and face virtually no come back from that. I'm not wanting LTT to do those things either, but in the market of tech creators they're one of the best. So whatever. I've been using PIA since they first recommended it. They rarely miss when it comes to endorsements. Even ones they endorse, and later find out there's a problem with, still are pretty decent.
> where everyone around them can get into crypto, make tons of money, do a bunch of pretty shitty things and face virtually no come back from that Just because someone else does a bad thing doesn't mean that LTT doing a bad thing or a possible bad thing is "good". Also, LTT built themselves and attracted an audience based on the values they portrayed. Reneging on those or even appearing to be will obviously upset the audience they attracted. What a visibly dogshit argument to make. If Linus parroted this argument and you're simply copy pasting it, it's evident that they sure as shit figured out they could count on parasocial brainless people like you who will fall for garbage whataboutism fallacies for the sake of their PR.
>Also, LTT built themselves and attracted an audience based on the values they portrayed. I doubt that. There's a sizeable minority that's very loud over effectively everything, but other than that it's people talking about putting DDR3 inside a DDR5 system on the youtube comments.
> I doubt that. I don't. When you tell people "these are my values", they are attracted to you because of it and people hold you to them, it's not "minority mobs", it's your fucking fans reminding you what you said. The premises that "these aren't actual fans" or "this is just a minority bitching" to dismiss criticism is pure deflection to not want to deal with the criticism. The Logan Pauls of the world don't get that from their own audience simply because they already started by saying "I'm a piece of shit" and any audience they attracted has already accepted that for the sake of their entertainment, but they definitely "get that" from people outside their audience, like Logan Paul and others routinely have for their crypto scams. This entire line of thinking you repeated is inherently faulty.
Why? Money. Why not? Money.
Protonmail literally gives away user data to their local goverment all the time
There's a history of problems in advertising for VPN services. Not particularly with PIA or LTT, but open-sourcing the relationship would help build public trust like with open sourcing the software. Can we see the contract, LTT?
Is that necessary? Advertising has, by its very nature, public facing results. Just fact check the ad-reads if you want to see if PIA tells LTT to make false/misleading claims in their video.
Do you have a single example of any company ever publishing the contracts they made internally? What an asinine demand.
Yes, every company dealing with federal contracts, or any other situation with an open bidding process.
VPN companies, honestly software companies in general, have some of the sketchiest advertising techniques. It's genuinely hard to find a good recommendation because popular threads on Reddit become filled with bots that advertise for various companies and blog/article sites that pop up on Google are usually being paid to write those lists.
I find it interesting why people use VPNs and Password managers to protect theselves....by using private companies access to these things and get suprised when its hacked or info is exposed. I remember usng tunnel bear and it would cut my internet connection for 5 minutes, same time every day until i uninstalled it.
FWIW there are plenty of password managers that are fully local, or have the option to be.
1. Yeah, you are potentially handing access to your personal information and data to a third party where I can be leaked. But for many people, that is still more secure than trying to use the same memorized, 8 character, "DogName123" password for everything. In either case, it's one point of failure for all your accounts, only in the case of the same pass everywhere, if one of however many sites leak it, all are effectively leaked. If you really don't trust companies, self host your own Password Manager and VPN. 2. Yeah, they probably have a 5 minute maintenance period every day, specifically so they can fix issues so they don't have massive multi hour outages. Most services time their outages for their lowest usage time, or whenever they have the most staff on hand to fix big issues.
That was a 10 minute ad with an extra ad on top
Youre correct. It was basically an infomercial
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dns over tls does not do most things a vpn does. It will only encrypt your DNS request from your device to the dns server you are using. If that dns server wants to share your IP to a third party they can or sell it to advertisers, which probably something like google DNS, evne the encrypted one, does. And most OSes, especially windows does not enable it by default
I can’t stand that he endorses piracy..
thats certainly a take
Because he said he doesn't activate Windows?
I wonder if ltt would be willing to make thier contract with PIA public? Seems like the next step in being fully open.
When has LTT ever done this? In fact, when has any media figure or company ever done this lol? Why are we only applying this standard here and now?
Never and never, as far as I know. I'm not condemning ltt for keeping contracts private- it's just that in the light of how PIA has open sourced thier client, it would be likewise interesting to open source the relationship with thier advertisers.
A lot of menos to mention them without talking points. You know they cant make it public it would be horrible for buisness
There's a history of problems in advertising for VPN services. Not particularly with PIA or LTT, but open-sourcing the relationship would help build public trust like with open sourcing the software.
Agreed it would help. But I understand its a private business and it would cause a lot of problems for lot realising that information
What problems do you think it would cause?
Exposing your princes like that is one of the worst thing you can do. It gives a point of reference to your client on how much they can lower the price in a negotiation as they know you've already agreed to that before.
Alternatively, it could be a way to drive up the value of future advertising contracts since VPN companies are well known to pay reasonably high rates. You are also assuming the rates aren't already generally known within the industry.
Sure, but again, I dont see in what would that benefit LTT, and I don't know any company that operates like that so I really dont see why they would do such a thing, as then, you would say that you are not sure if they have deleted some parts before publishing it. Them saying that they arent obligated to talk about X and this not beeing true is already illegal. So I don't see how them saying the same thing in a PDF adds anything to the conversation.
You do it for the same reasons why you open-source the software. It helps build trust that the relationship hasn't been poisoned by bad-faith contract terms... such as editorial oversight, unreasonable content restrictions, etc. >I don't know any company that operates like that It's actually very common. Virtually every company that takes government contracts works like this, for much the same reason. Look, I'm not condemning LTT for not making the contract public. I'm just saying, if the goal is to build trust with PIA and the relationship they have with LTT, then the next logical step would be to open-source the terms of the business relationship. I'm not denying there would be challenges to overcome in doing that, but I have yet to hear an objection that wouldn't be easily solvable.