IPRedator - suspending users based on fake abuse tickets

[zhang888 1066]

This is actually a hilarious story to read.

 

I had an idea before, about how you should choose the right VPN provider, and I posted it on

the forums before, but I never had the time nor the effort to make such steps, since I don't

actually think I should be the one who does it. As a person who knows the weak spots about

running a VPN service (athough not this one for profit), I am sure that most providers have to

respond to genuine abuse issues. The post I made some time ago would just test the way your

provider is going to take measures in case  some abuse tickets are sent, and by that you can

actually test how good and neutral your provider is. This is somewhat a brutal test, so please don't

do these tests, unless you fully negotiated them with your provider beforehand, these are really extreme

conditions and honestly I don't think any provider is actually able to hold such tests for a single user,

especially steps 1-3. Always remember that the ~$7 a month is does not even cover a cup

of coffee for a lawyer, in case your provider runs into issues while maintaining your subscription.

 

This was my original suggestion, however:

https://airvpn.org/topic/16774-anonymous-vpn-providers-2016-edition-tf/?do=findComment&comment=37557

 

 

There was some individual, who wanted to put IPRedator's policy, and mainly the competence

of their abuse desk, up for some test, which they, spoiler alert, badly failed.

 

This is an excellent read. The test case was not very ethical, and I can presume some other

providers, or at least Datacenter abuse teams, would fall into that, but for the sake of transparecy

you should read this, and be aware of what kind of issues VPN operators have to deal with, almost daily.

 

https://chloe.re/2016/05/15/terminating-a-user-on-ipredator-using-false-accusations/

[FromtheWalls 83]

I remember reading about this ridiculous clause back when checking out VPN providers and I can see that they, as I predicted by the clause, are just a tiny bit too zealous and hysterical to even make it past the first round. SJW-types running a VPN - that's a red flag right there 

[Gabi 1]

Sorry for popping up out of nowhere and digging out this discussion board corpse. But does anyone still have an archived website of this or has any further information regarding this case? "Terminating a user on IPredator using false accusations"

I have been using Njalla (who used to be IPredator before) for quite a while. I would just like to know if there is any reason to believe that Njalla (former ipredator) stores or used to store logs. If so, I will do a switch in a heartbeat to AirVPN.

Thanks to anyone still having a good memory or is more capable of searching the internet than I am.

[pj 72]

@Gabi

Hello,
I am an AirVPN founder and could never find a reliable confirmation to the article linked by Zhang888. Today it can't be retrieved, not even from the WayBack Machine, which holds only one useless copy. Checking zhang888 messages I must note that on other two occasions he/she seemed inclined to bring unsubstantiated accusations against various persons related to Wikileaks. https://airvpn.org/forums/topic/42920-airvpn’s-twitter…/?do=findComment&comment=97424

Today, in 2023, we know that all the persons who worked for WikiLeaks in key positions (Assange, Appelbaum, Fitzgibbons...) or were developers in the Tor Project or Bitcoin Core (Todd) who were investigated but never indicted after dubious (to say the least!) reports of sex related crimes were all innocent, or even victims of a smear campaign orchestrated by intelligence and private entities (Palantir, HBGary...) in a huge, worldwide and long effort to achieve "character assassination", distract citizens from the horrendous crimes disclosed by the official documents published by WikiLeaks and send a message to journalists all over the world ("this may happen to you too if you don't stay silent, no matter where in the world you live").

In 2016, the year zhang888 created this topic, the smear campaigns had been organized since years earlier (check for example Maurizi's book "The secret power" or https://www.commondreams.org/views/2011/02/15/more-facts-emerge-about-leaked-smear-campaigns-aimed-wikileaks-supporters-and) and had been working in full force. Anything related to WikiLeaks support as well as WikiLeaks supporters had to be attacked, online and offline. The Pirate Bay and indirectly IPREDator, also known as "The original Pirate Bay VPN", as it was founded by Sunde and was important for monetary funding, could be targets at least (but probably for other reasons too) because of the key role played by at least one TPB founder to spread the "Collateral Murder" video footage against any censorship attempt. https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-helped-wikileaks-on-several-fronts-130205/

Also note how The Pirate Bay was under special surveillance, as revealed by documents leaked by Snowden https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/18/5421958/leaked-nsa-documents-show-debate-over-tracking-wikileaks-pirate-bay when NSA/CSS started forming the idea to treat journalists and publishers as "malicious foreign actors"

Quote

"Can we treat a foreign server who stores, or potentially disseminates leaked or stolen US data on it's [sic] server as a 'malicious foreign actor' for the purpose of targeting with no defeats? Examples: WikiLeaks, thepiratebay.org, etc."

I do not think that this specific event is part of one of the smear campaigns, but I find it not implausible that it's just one of the secondary consequences of those tactics. Since any other documentation is missing and was missing at the time, I do not see how the alleged accusations against the old IPRedator can be taken seriously. Let's see whether anybody can produce a substantial documentation supporting the allegations.

Kind regards
 

[Stalinium 44]

@pj I love to read such posts that condense news and developments of a time, the experiences and their impact in a few lines.

It would be impossible to find out the author (unless historic WHOIS records show real name or email) with what's left. Maybe chloe.re is a long-term nickname, but I'm doubtful.
The snapshot from Oct, 2016 shows that Chloe made another post on May 15th. I assume she deleted the IPredator blog post between these two dates for unknown reasons: https://web.archive.org/web/20161024000532/http://chloe.re/tag/english/
pj is probably right about "I find it not implausible that it's just one of the secondary consequences of those tactics." One her other article is titled "Why I hate to distrust Edward Snowden". Other than that, she seems to be very competent in web security as an administrator (many HTTPS-TLS related topics) and speaks Swedish, there are posts in Swedish.

Oh just before submitting the post:

Quote

Protect against Cache-attacks

I asked my friend (or enemy depending how you look at it) avlidienbrunn if he could name an interesting attack and he said "cache attacks". Indeed, »

chloe on English, Web 16 August 2016

Someone can contact the friend and ask for contact information or that article specifically.

Edit: Used "intchloe" on Github. However the account is currently inactive.
Edit2: dotchloe on twitter
I will remove these if she's contacted and the article restored or an answer is provided