Are you paying for a VPN you do not need?
Kickbacks, commissions, and corruption. No I am not talking about politicians, I am talking about bloggers, YouTubers, influencers, etc. who review VPNs. With all of these conflicts of interest how do you know who to trust — so I decided to dig in and share what I found. The deeper I dug, the more concerned I became.
I have included more quotes and screenshots with links to relevant sources then I normally would because I could hardly believe what I was reading and I wanted you to be able to evaluate the sources for yourselves.
I have broken this article up as follows:
- Who owns the VPN companies (ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, etc) and what are their backgrounds?
- Can you trust the reviews, blogs, videos, ads, etc that are flooding the internet and airwaves about VPNs?
- What does a VPN actually do and what is it protecting you from?
Who owns the VPN companies
First who owns these VPN companies and what are their motivations?
Restore Privacy reports:
“Kape Technologies, a former malware distributor, has now acquired four different VPN services and a collection of VPN “review” websites that rank Kape’s VPN holdings at the top of their recommendations.”
“The main person behind Kape is Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire who previously spent time in jail.
“ExpressVPN’s CIO, Daniel Gericke admitted to violating U.S. hacking laws and prohibitions on selling sensitive military technology” to the United Arab Emirates. . . this “sensitive military technology” helped the UAE spy on dissidents and human rights activists according to Reuters.”
The Daily Mail says
“Sagi . . . admitted grave deceit, bribery and insider trading. He was jailed for nine months.”
Restore Privacy reports Kape Technologies owns:
- ExpressVPN (This is the VPN we hear Dan Bongino promoting)
- CyberGhost VPN
- Zenmate VPN
- Private Internet Access
I do not know who owns all the other VPN companies out there or what the background of the owners is — but that is the point, we do not really know. Worse they could be bought out at any time by somebody with a very different agenda.
Remember, you are going to divert all your internet traffic through the VPN — so think carefully about who’s hands you want it to pass.
Who can you trust?
Dan Bongino promotes ExpressVPN and is a name we all know and many of us trust. I was shocked when I read the background of Kape Technologies and the ExpressVPN CIO. I can only assume Dan does not know. Hopefully somebody will share this info with him so he can investigate for himself. Of course, Dan’s promotion of ExpressVPN started before it was acquired by Kape Technologies and we do not know if he will continue to promote it.
But wait it gets worse.
Restore Privacy reports:
“Kape purchases a collection of VPN “review” websites for $149 million, then changes the rankings”
“In May 2021, news broke that Kape had purchased vpnMentor.com and Wizcase.com. Collectively, these two websites have monthly search traffic of around 6.1 million visitors . . . just a few months ago, both vpnMentor and Wizcase had NordVPN and Surfshark in their top rankings. However, since Kape purchased these websites, we see significant rankings changes that give all of the top 3 spots to Kape’s own VPN companies.”
So we probably cannot trust a lot of these review sites.
Sorry, there is more bad news
Many VPN companies run affiliate programs — so if an influencer (blogger YouTuber, podcaster, etc) includes a link to the VPN company’s site and you click on that link and purchase a product or service — the influencer gets a commission. Clearly the influencer has a conflict of interest because the better they make the VPN sound and the more they convince you that you need a VPN, the more likely you are to buy and they earn a commission. Neither you nor I know how much that potential commission effects their opinion.
Some VPN companies simply sponsor these influencers — but the conflict of interest still arises. If they do not say good things about the VPN company, the VPN company could withdraw their sponsorship.
What does a VPN actually do and what is it protecting you from?
The video above does 3 things:
- makes a bit of fun about how compromised the VPN influencer business is
- explains to you what a VPN does, and
- discusses if you need one or not.
I want you to watch the video, so I am not going to give away all the key points, but a few things that caught my attention were:
- Most browsers, apps and websites use https (instead of http) to communicate personal information these days — which means it is encrypted as it travels from your browser to the website using a url starting with https:// . So a VPN is not really adding anything as far as encryption goes.
- Hiding your IP address from your ISP. Yes a VPN does that — in the video Tom discusses the issue so you can work out if that is important to you.
The benefit of a VPN that Tom does not discuss is hiding your IP Address from the destination server e.g. Google, Facebook, etc because many of these tech companies will use that IP address to build a profile on you encompassing a lot of personal characteristics, likes, dislikes, habits, etc.
I think we do want to hide your IP address from that destination server, but given how little we know about the current and future owners of these VPN companies and their staff — I think there is a better way to achieve the same result and it is free.
TOR might be a better option for you
Find out what TOR is and why I believe TOR is a better alternative then a VPN.
You still want a VPN
If you have your mind made up and your heart is set on getting a VPN, then I suggest you watch this video. It is educational and provides some specific recommendations about the VPN services they recommend you use.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Writer and family members do not hold any financial interest in the businesses manufacturing, developing, and/or selling any of the products or services mentioned in this article. Nor are we compensated in any way e.g. commission, sponsorship, or affiliate program if you decide to purchase these products or services.
