It’s unfortunate, because like most folks I have a deep respect for the leading role The Pirate Bay has played in the past – they deserve full credit for that. Perhaps that’s why I am so disappointed by the less than forthright way they’ve handled Ipredator. I wished them nothing but success, when the project was announced – the whole idea of “competitors” is a bit silly, in our market. We see the market so limited by good providers that ANY genuine effort to provide privacy service is absolutely to be applauded.

But, when someone starts “cutting corners” in the honest department, it threatens to make the entire market seem shady and unreliable. That isn’t acceptable – it absolutely serves the interests of the censors and state eavesdroppers. That baseline of honest should be absolutely fundamental to our industry – whatever other things we may agree or disagree on, operationally.

Being the one to “blow the whistle” on the Relakks rebranding brought me no satisfaction, nor made us many friends – it’s still the right thing to do. If we hold each other to good standards of conduct, we will have better success in reaching more folks with crypto privacy service. For me, anyway, that’s the real goal of the work itself.

Regards,

Fausty

irelakksator.com

Additionally, Sunde has admitted that because the old Relakks network (which was abandoned, with customer funds disappearing, in 2008 by whomever owns it – they’ve never explained any of that) is built on pptp proprietary VPN tools, that “IPREDator is very much a political statement more than anything else.” That’s right, this “privacy service” uses technology that’s so badly broken it can’t even promise to protect privacy! Sunde only made this admission after I demanded he justify how they could put forth the re-animated Relakks stuff as a viable “privacy service” despite the many flaws exposed in it.

The original research by cryptographic guru Bruce Schneier on the PPTP protocol – and why it’s inherently, structurally insecure and should NEVER be trusted with important security issues, is available in full here:

cultureghost.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=8143

Regards,

Fausty
Chief Technology Officer
Cryptocloud Secure Networking