It finally happened – a VPN provider in their customer (1, 2, 3). It just had to happen eventually. It’s the first case that I heard of and I’m sure not the last. What is advertised as a secure way to be anonymous on the net has always been at most as good as the provider. There’s no way to verify that yours is OK unless they proved that they are not trustworthy already.
The solutions are the same as always:
There are several others too, the choice depends on what you want to do.
A solution where you don’t have to trust some unknown company is inherently more secure than one that requires such trust. So do yourself a favour and when you need anonymity – get real anonymity and not smoke and mirrors.
Transition to *nix is painful for me. I know Windows well and understand its ways very well. I know what happens on my computer inside out, can spot all irregularities and fairly easily dig their causes. I act as a local guru.
On *nix it’s gone. Everything is different and I seem unable to do basic things. When something doesn’t work (and it occurs frequently), I can’t find the cause and can’t fix it. I have to leave with things being broken. It hurts.
Nevertheless, in 10% of cases I try to dig the causes and it alone makes me spend more time reading docs and searching the net than actually using things.
And this is one of things that make me like FreeBSD more than Linux. It has a comprehensive documentation. Thanks to it, I have to ask simple questions less frequently. It’s better to be with my fall alone.
Ah, GPL, the frontier license of Free Software movement. It was created by Richard Stallman to eradicate his greatest enemy – proprietary software. It promises to set you free from proprietary cages where software authors set restrictive limits on how their works can be used. With GPL there is no cage. You can go anywhere you want to go.
Except that there’s a line on a ground, that if you cross, flames burst from everywhere and lawyers jump out of nowhere swearing to destroy you if you don’t go back. The line is using GPLed pieces in something proprietary. You just aren’t allowed to do it.
This reminds me of words by Henry Ford:
People can have the Model T in any colour–so long as it’s black.
Ford hated colours other than black. Stallman hates proprietary software.
I have nothing against hatred, but saying that GPL is about freedom is hypocritical. By definition, freedom is ability to make choices. GPL takes the concept of open source and adds restrictions. So it’s not about freedom. Quite the opposite, in fact.