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Kape Technologies buys ExpressVPN for $936M
- m00dy 5y agoKape technology? sounds like another shell company from NSA
- robertlagrant 5y agoThey'd better keep the name, or that's a lot of Youtube videos that will need rerecording.
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoThat's really all they're buying, right? The advertising budget, the name recognition, and the existing user contracts are the important things. The software isn't anything special, and the hardware and network connections to actually run the VPN are probably a very small part of their margins - certainly not worth nearly 1 billion dollars.
- robertlagrant 5y agoYes, I think so. It's a large sales and marketing company which happens to rent VPN :)
- kurthr 5y agoActually, it was one of the few VPNs that regularly worked to connect past the firewall in more rural China (outside Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen). Don't personally know (or have as much interest) about the state of things now.
- kaesar14 5y agoIs it easier to get past the firewall in super urban China? Why is that?
- kube-system 5y agoPure speculation, but I would guess that it may make practical sense for the party to relax the firewall in places where access to internet resources abroad could be more necessary for economic reasons.
- tyingq 5y agoThe much heavier traffic and variety of traffic in urban areas probably means looser rules. Even if just to reduce the noise for the great firewall admins.
- azinman2 5y agoIt’s not about heavier traffic. China literally has different rules for different parts of the country, different ISPs, different wireless providers (especially foreign versus domestic), etc.
- tyingq 5y agoThat doesn't mean that "volume/variety" isn't also a driver for different rules.
- azinman2 5y agoWhere do you get that from, and what would be the technical basis?
- tyingq 5y ago>what would be the technical basis? Just the sort of thing you see in the real world. It's much easier to lock down access for a network with less people using it. A network with more people starts to find all the edge cases where your lock-down rules break legitimate things, which results in calls to your boss from people with the clout to make you change stuff. Similar for reporting, alerting, etc. Volume and variety of traffic can force you to be more lenient in larger networks. Or lose any real effectiveness because your signal/noise ratio is now bad.
- fierro 5y agothese are valid questions to ask but I'd be wary of falling into this very common trap that I see on HN, which is dismissing the sophistication of a product based on, well, nothing really. Given that another company was willing to pay $1b, and given that this is a free market, do you think it's more likely that ExpressVPN was simple and "not special", or that there is actually some substance there?
- qeternity 5y agoIt’s a bit like saying “but getting to the moon is just a bit of metal and fuel”. Execution is everything. And there are no guarantees when it comes to execution. That’s what the cost of acquiring an otherwise “simple” business is: the cost to guarantee successful execution of a business/product plan.
- saurik 5y agoLet's presume you are correct; is they idea that they are then special in a way that PIA isn't? This is just like when your local supermarket gets purchased by a company that owns other nearby supermarkets to be folded into their brand: they want the location and the customers that visit it, not some interesting innovation they heard you have been hiding for how to run your supply chain.
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoI think that's a false dichotomy. You're suggesting that either ExpressVPN was a really good business with sophisticated secret sauce, strong technical chops, and capital assets probably worth $1B (validated by people with lots of money being willing to pay for it), or that I and other HN commenters are wrong about the sophistication and it's really worth peanuts because OpenVPN can be run on most routers or any Linux box. The latter is obviously false, but the former is not necessarily true - instead, what I and other users are pointing out is that they're really selling is their users, and implying that the buyer expects to be able to extract more than $1,000,000,000.00 of value from them. As you pointed out, you see this sort of comment when a social network or many other kinds of startups with lots of users are sold. The point is that the users are the product in this transaction.
- nayuki 5y agoInteresting how this news juxtaposes with Mullvad VPN's announcement of staying independent. https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2021/9/16/ownership-and-future-mullvad-vpn/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2021/9/16/ownership-and-future-m... ; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28551960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28551960
- mbesto 5y agoAs pointed in the Mullvad thread on HN - their announcement is very likely a marketing move due to the perceived distrust of a new owner.
- 0-_-0 5y agoThey are trying to capture the people leaving from Express VPN. There probably was a small exodus when PIA was bought and they learned from it. Meanwhile, I'm a happy PIA customer and just got a new 3 year contract.
- wackro 5y agoYour choice is your own, but what made you want to stay with PIA after the takeover?
- 0-_-0 5y agoI'm not convinced that Kape is a worse owner, the evidence was weak. In addition, they sell privacy. If they stop respecting privacy they go under. If they start storing data they legally have to hand it over when being asked by law enforcement, which would expose that they stored it.
- CaveTech 5y agoThis is blind trust, you are relying spotting wrong doing after it happens, at which point you would already be compromised.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ionwake 5y agoFor this much money they are after the data right? Or am I being too overly dramatic
- ve55 5y agoI'd hope not, but I don't think it's a necessary conclusion. Most subscribers to VPN companies pay $5 or more a month and use almost zero bandwidth (basically just opening Facebook and Twitter here and there), and so it's easy to throw literally thousands of them onto a single high-throughput dedi. The ones with good marketing are very high-margin companies with a high LTV.
- Closi 5y agoEh, their revenue was $279 million, and profits at $75m. Growth at 30% p.a. so it really depends how long-term their investment outlook is and how much they believe growth will continue. Particularly considering they own multiple VPN providers, so can probably squeeze overheads to increase margins, and also that much market control might allow you to increase prices across all brands you own due to reduced competition (as long as you don't tell anyone that's what you are doing - naughty naughty). Of course foreign governments are already at the heart of all these VPN providers anyway.
- cptaj 5y agoWith the rise of dictatorships worldwide and the complete inability of liberal democracies to fight back, I would guess there's a lot of growth in this market
- superflit2 5y agoMaybe not only "data" but ""meta-data"" that is more important.
- fuj 5y agoIt says it will double their customer base to 6M. Considering ExpressVPN's subscription is $100/y, we're looking at around +$300M/y revenue. I really doubt selling data is worth more than that or even worth jeopardising that revenue.
- boramalper 5y agoAlso: > ExpressVPN says in a statement that it knew the 'key facts' of the employment history of one of its executives, Daniel Gericke. On Tuesday Gericke was revealed in court records to have worked on the UAE's hacking and spying operation > https://www.vice.com/en/article/3aq9p5/expressvpn-uae-hacking-project-raven-daniel-gericke https://www.vice.com/en/article/3aq9p5/expressvpn-uae-hackin... https://nitter.net/josephfcox/status/1438127822883729412 https://nitter.net/josephfcox/status/1438127822883729412
- 0-_-0 5y ago"Daniel has a deep understanding of the tools and techniques used by the adversaries we aim to protect users against, and as such is a uniquely qualified expert to advise on defense against such threats. Our product and infrastructure have already benefited from that understanding in better securing user data,"
- penagwin 5y agoYeah it's a tricky one isn't it? On one hand many of the best security researches are ex-state employees, and many of them go from that into the private sector. On the other hand it makes it sound like they are friendly with potential adversaries.
- duped 5y agoI feel like the threat model for consumer VPNs doesn't include state actors
- croshan 5y agoYou don't? I don't think activists only use TOR, I'd imagine they layer a VPN on as well, they're not mutually exclusive.
- fragmede 5y agoThe threat model for "I want to watch Netflix in a different country than the one I'm in" is totally different from "I'm Edward Snowden and the CIA wants my ass". Consumer-grade VPNs protect against the first "threat" alright, but it's a totally different ball game to protect against an APT like the NSA/CIA, who will break into your VPN company's office in the middle of the night and replace all of the computer keyboards with exact replicas that have a keyloggers inside in order to get access to your data. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25914734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25914734
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mrkramer 5y agoVPN service is worth $1bn?! I'm not sure about that. They must have a lot of users then.
- NautilusWave 5y agoSo what VPNs does Kape own now, besides ExpressVPN and PIA? The article stub mentions a buying spree but the full article seems down.
- NiekvdMaas 5y agoCyberghost was their first VPN service
- schleck8 5y ago- Cyberghost - PIA - ZenMate - ExpressVPN And unless I interpret the article incorrectly, they bought all of these over the last 3 years. They also bought VPN review sites (affiliate marketers as I prefer to call them) and changed the rankings, according to this article: https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/ https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn...
- NautilusWave 5y agoConflict of interest is a totally legit business strategy!
- rocky1138 5y agoMullvad is great. No conflicts of interest, just a happy user.
- croes 5y ago"Kape Technologies was originally found under the name of Crossrider in 2011 developing advertising apps until they changed their name in 2018. However, their software was treated as malware by companies such as Malwarebytes and Symantec begging one to ask, how can such a company despite rebranding itself change the shoddy culture that it had? But the connections don’t end there. The very first CEO of Crossrider, Koby Menachemi, happened to be once a part of Unit 8200 which is an Israeli Intelligence Unit in their military and has also been dubbed as “Israel’s NSA.” Teddy Sagi, one of the company’s investors was mentioned in the Panama Papers which were leaked in 2016." https://www.hackread.com/israeli-firm-kape-technologies-expressvpn-privacy/ https://www.hackread.com/israeli-firm-kape-technologies-expr...
- temp8964 5y agoThis reminds me of a Chinese company 360 (www.360.cn). It used to be a malware company and then turned into a antivirus company.
- Forbo 5y agoHere's hoping the change is genuine and not just a surveillance front.
- temp8964 5y agoThe founder/ceo of 360 is a totally opportunist. He enjoys several political titles. He would love to be a surveillance front.
- trutannus 5y agoI mean, those are transferrable skills.
- Macuyiko 5y agoIndeed, and if you've ever used a machine in China with that crap installed you know how well that went. Speaking of China, it has always been strange how well ExpressVPN worked there even during high pressure moments where all other vpn operators bit the dust, with some already wondering a few years ago if there wasn't something more shady going on. Eventually I ended up using some self managed shadowsocks servers and it's been a while, so no idea what the current state of affairs is, but I'm even less convinced to use them now.
- chrisco255 5y agoWhile we're on the subject, are there any alternative VPNs people recommend?
- gazby 5y agoMullvad tends to be the highest recommended VPN provider. https://mullvad.net/ https://mullvad.net/
- Cribbin 5y agoFor most use-cases I can't really see any reason not to go with Mullvad: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28551960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28551960 https://mullvad.net https://mullvad.net
- DaiPlusPlus 5y agoOpenVPN running off your own NAS. Why would you use anything else? (Except for getting around geo-blocking, of course)
- Fnoord 5y agoWireguard, better throughput and latency. Mullvad accepts Wireguard, btw.
- nirvdrum 5y agoMy NAS runs in my house. While I do have a VPN to connect when away, I don't particularly care for my ISP seeing all my traffic or being tracked by the entire web. I use Mullvad to try to achieve some semblance of privacy.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago> I don't particularly care for my ISP seeing all my traffic or being tracked by the entire web. I use Mullvad to try to achieve some semblance of privacy. But VPNs don't enhance your privacy though - you're trading your ISP's snopping for your VPN operator's snooping - and TLS makes it all irrelevant.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- krono 5y agoThis is like your kids' daycare being taken over by the local pastor who, not long ago, was caught in the act with minors under his care (and since promised to do better - with nothing much to show for it).
- tsjq 5y agowoah. couldn't put it any better than this.
- flixic 5y agoLooks like we have a VPN duopoly forming: - Kape with Cyberghost, PIA and ExpressVPN - Tesonet with NordVPN, and allegedly a couple more most known, but there is no strong proof, so I'd rather not list them here.
- jcadam 5y agoDidn't know this. And I'm an expressvpn user. Anyone know of any good alternatives?
- smiley1437 5y agoMullvad
- blablablub 5y agoNice. The NSA has to spend billions to wiretap the internet and fish for valuable data. Kape only spends 1B and has probably a much higher percentage of traffic they are interested in. And the best thing is the users are actually paying them...
- KoftaBob 5y agoI'm noticing a trend here: 1. NSO Group aka the "use our tool to hack activists/political opponents"-as-a-service company, is founded by *former members of Israeli intelligence and their Unit 8200*. 2. Kape Technologies, whose software is labeled as malware by companies such as Malwarebytes and Symantec, founded by *former members of Israeli intelligence Unit 8200* 3. Black Cube, the spy-for-hire company that the likes of Harvey Weinstein hired to collect dirt on those suing him: founded by *former members of Israeli intelligence Unit 8200* Needless to say, it's looking like using HolaVPN, an Israeli P2P VPN (founded by, you guessed it, *former members of Israeli intelligence*), is a colossally bad idea. I'm fully aware that Unit 8200 alumni are very prolific when it comes to founding tech startups in Israel in general, but that doesn't change how brazen their industry is when it comes to selling sophisticated spyware to very bad people/governments.
- belter 5y agoHere is another trend/hint...go to LinkedIn and search, how many ex-Unit 8200 now work doing Software Development at ...Apple.
- dannylandau 5y agoConsidering that the whole executive team at Kape is Israeli, then no one should be surprised, even if domiciled in UK. I'm a fan of ExpressVPN.
- jstummbillig 5y agoI am so very confused with the recent ubiquity of VPN. I understand VPN. What happened that everyone needs or is at least being convinced they need VPN? Why has it become a product worth being marketed to consumers on every channel? Is this a bubble? Is it a money laundering scheme? Seriously, what is going on?
- ElectronShak 5y agoAccessing geo-restricted content is probably one of the reasons. A lot of VPN services use this line while advertising.
- Hamuko 5y agoAccessing geo-restricted content is a minority of the VPN advertising that I come across. Most of the VPN marketing I see is a combination of "security and privacy", "online banking", "hackers", "private data", "snooping ISPs".
- btkramer9 5y agoI've always thought it was like a smoke shop. They say their products are for tobacco but everyone knows what its really for. Same with VPN, they say it's for all those things above but accessing geo-restricted content seems like the real reason.
- Hamuko 5y agoWell, if I see a list of "good privacy-focused VPNs" on like TorrentFreak, then I'm pretty sure that they mean "these VPNs are good to route your torrent traffic through". But I do actually doubt that people watching a video on YouTube are going to get the "watch Japanese Netflix on ButtVPN" subtext when the advertising blurp is "ButtVPN protects your online banking against hackers". It's not like it's actually illegally to promote a VPN for bypassing geoblocking, so if that was the main driver of customers, they'd really use it a lot more often.
- forgithubs 5y agoIf that would happen to my VPN service, I would disconnect in a heartbeat.
- qwertyuiop_ 5y agoSignal is a Qinetq front
- Trias11 5y agoSelling access logs to the government(s) is a good business.
- beezischillin 5y agoI find any VPN company that pays influencers to talk about privacy, security and stolen credit cards suspicious from the get go. Especially when they do it on prevalent tech channels. And especially when they talk about the stolen credit cards. Selling people a false sense of security is something I dislike from the get go. They could list the potential uses without having to resort to that. I know that it’s just my paranoia but I tend to assume any Internet service I don’t have a direct control of is logging things and will give up those logs when asked. (We’ve already seen plenty of that). I’d feel less safe tunneling over some company’s network than not doing it at all. With that the use case I have for them is very limited. I prefer to route through my home network instead. That being said my ISP is not hostile to its users so I understand people who have one that is. I mostly just use Pi-Hole to drop bad traffic, Quad9’s filtered endpoint over DNSCrypt and Ubiquiti’s built in threat defense and honeypot and AdGuard on the client side for some basic security and privacy and employ some common sense when browsing the internet.
- dd444fgdfg 5y agoI'm an ExpressVPN customer. Is this a bad thing? Does it make my data less private? Should I move VPN provider? To who?
- drumhead 5y agoI only use Express to watch Tv overseas or access websites that are blocked by my ISP, but it makes me uneasy to know that shady characters are ultimately controlling this service in locations governed by unsavoury governments.