Ricnvolved1956

Serenacat-- The U.S is a diseased state and it's going to get worse. A LOT worse. And I'm not referring to Trump, though that's bad enough. I'm referring to the NSA/CIA/FBI/State Dept./corporate "intelligence" black hole. Take a look at Rodrigo Duterte of The Phillippines recently telling Amerika to go f*ck itself. He won't be the only national leader to do that. Other countries are getting tired of Amerikan hegemony and bossiness. Make no mistake about it, folks-- There is a resurgence of McCarthyism at work here in the U.S and it's being practiced by both sides of the political spectrum. The liberal left is in a full blown self delusional hysteria over the election result. "Alt right" and "fake news" have become extremely shrill buzz phrases. Russia, Vladimir Putin, RT/Sputnik are oh-so-convenient whipping boys. They delude themselves by thinking their collective hysteria projects strength and resolve when all it really does is prove their weakness and insecurity. Those of us on the left who chose to buck the prevailing party/ideological orthodoxy and not vote for Clinton are being demonized with incredible bared-fangs ferocity. But it's okay, I can take it. I used to think it was only the insane, lunatic, conservative right wing that lived in a political echo chamber. Trump's election is proving that the liberal left has it's own political echo chamber. Many liberal commentators I used to genuinely admire and hold in high regard I have now lost all faith and trust in. It's depressing, it's discouraging. There is a quote by George Orwell in the signature of another poster here in the forum (I apologize for not remembering who it is) I had not heard before. The quote has been on my mind quite a bit since becoming aware of the liberal left hysteria and I humbly provide it here-- The further a society drifts from truth, the more it hates those who speak it. (Sorry if this is too far off the topic of this thread, but serenacat's post prompted me to extend her thoughts on (what I hope is) a relative tangent.)

*YAWWWWN* The $hillary bots are never going to accept the reality of a sh***y candidate who then ran an even sh***ier campaign. And the cry babies have the democratic party insiders and queen makers to thank for that. A good friend was pretty despondent with the election results. Like me, he voted Sanders in our state primary. Unlike me, he voted (quite unenthusiastically) for Clinton in the general election whereas I voted for Stein. I knew he didn't agree with my complacency about the result and asked if I really thought Sanders would've won had he been the democratic candidate. My response was that we'll never know for sure, but there was an even bigger question than if Sanders would've won-- Did Clinton win? I'm going to try to make it clear one more time-- I have no love for Trump. At all. But after how the Clinton and party mafia treated Sanders and his supporters... well, all I can say is they got exactly what they deserve.

VPNuser172-- You nailed it with your post. Whether the new law forces Air to eventually remove the U.K. servers or not, I have no idea. For me personally, it makes no difference at all. I've been an Air subscriber for 1 year and I've rarely run any of my devices through the U.K. servers. I understand that some Air subscribers depend on the U.K. servers to bypass content territorial restrictions, and I'm sympathetic to that. In any event, I made the decision to delete the profiles for the U.K. and Ukrainian servers from the OpenVPN app. I wouldn't dare try to tell other Air subscribers which servers to use or avoid, but I prefer to play it safe and permanently stop going through Air's servers in the countries just mentioned. I've always had the uneasy feeling that GCHQ has already been spying on internet traffic within Britain and this new law will just give the spys the legitimacy I'm sure they've been demanding behind the scenes.

Interesting you should ask.... I renewed my Air subscription on Black Friday afternoon with my credit card through Avangate. I called my credit card company beforehand to give them a heads up and the transaction went through smooth as glass.

I'm an Apple user but not one of those who believes in an "Apple tooth fairy". I'm sure there are many hardcore Apple users who have that attitude. While Apple products are certainly more expensive I tend to believe you get what you pay for. Nothing is perfect and any device will eventually become obsolete. Having said that, I eventually came around to the belief in Apple quality. My first Apple product was a Mac Mini purchased 10 years ago, to be replaced 2 years ago by an iMac desktop. I added an Apple iPad Mini3 tablet last year and an iPhone SE this past July. I would never go back to a Windows PC for personal use even if someone offered to pay for a new one every year for a lifetime. I got extremely tired of having to deal with constant worry about viruses, the dreaded blue screen, irritating defragmentation. It was a supreme pain in the ass. Maybe those issues have been minimized or even solved with better technological advancements, but I don't care; it doesn't matter to me now. People can think of me as an Apple snob, but I've never been someone to care what others think about my life choices. (Ironically, I'm composing this post on a Samsung Tab S 10.5 tablet. I admit it's a pretty nifty device I've had for 2 years. However, I hate Google and when this tablet has reached the end of it's useful life.... no more Android for me.)

"And the bill already makes it clear that the government wants to go after "infringing sites" by choking their access to payment providers such as Visa and PayPal, ..." Not that the cyber privacy war by the surveillance state against internet users wasn't already in full gear, but this proposed legislation shows that the offensive is cranking up to a new level. I've thought about this since Snowden's revelations and my prediction is this will come to an all out war between privacy hacktivist groups like Anonymous (and others we don't even know exist) and every government working every second to permanently take away our online privacy rights. This may sound naive to the reader when you consider the seemingly bottomless resources of the government/corporate surveillance state, but..... I'm placing my hope and faith in privacy hactivist organizations to bring the offending entities to their knees, if that's what it takes. If we should lose this fight then at least we must go down swinging with everything we've got. I'm convinced the privacy advocates are on the side of right.

Renewed earlier this afternoon and now I'm paid up for the next 736 days. A great big THANK YOU to AirVPN for the generous discount, and for providing a very important service.

Thoughts/opinions? https://medium.com/@yegor/hypocrisy-plaguing-major-vpn-providers-b4613b82f795#.4innt55cw

I can't help but laugh with grim, cynical sarcasm at the nonstop Russia bashing in western media when it's clear that several western governments are striving to take the lead as the REAL Big Brother. Stalin must surely be chuckling through his mustache at what is happening.

I'm afraid we're all left to choosing an email service and VPN provider (and the VPN's servers, by extension) according to the best and latest information out there. After the revelations from Edward Snowden became public, it really hit home with me that it's up to each individual to find out the best way to resist and fight the NSA surveillance state. Yes, we must rely on services like AirVPN and the best security conscious email services out there. But it's still up to each person who really cares about this stuff to seek out and USE the best services we have available. And you HAVE to be willing to spend some money to do that. My opinion is that "free" doesn't mean crap when it comes to protecting your online privacy. I don't know that there's a 100 percent guarantee of privacy and anonymity when you're online. But every internet user has a duty to resist and fight illegal government and corporate surveillance, and that requires us to use the best tools we have available. It matters, folks. It really, really matters. If we shrug and say that we've already lost the fight, or that we can't win because we're up against the most powerful government and corporate interests, then some form of "1984" becomes the kind of future we are leaving ourselves to.

NaDre-- Choice is a great thing. I agree with what you say. The Air staff can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think AirVPN's idealism and business principles are mutually exclusive. As an idealistic customer, I love having a "buffet" of servers to choose from when I'm online. And with that freedom of choice, I no longer have the U.K., Ukrainian, and French server profiles in my OpenVPN app. However, if Air establishes servers in France again, then I will add the profiles to my choices. But I really am done with going through their U.K and Ukrainian servers.

For the record-- I've just deleted the OpenVPN profiles for U.K., Ukraine, and France. Added the new severs in Belgium.

Embers-- What about Protonmail's feature of a second password to decrypt your email? Perhaps it's not at the same level as automatic PGP on incoming mail, but it's still a pretty nifty feature. I personally like Countermail having a physical USB encryption key as an option to make your account more secure. I never went with the USB key option during the 2 years I've been with them, but it doesn't matter now anyway. I'm ending my subscription with them in a few weeks because it's a pain in the butt to use. You have to log in to your account through their Java applet and if you don't keep Java up to date on your desktop then you can't sign in. I decided that Protonmail was less complicated and still secure enough for my purposes, along with being a better overall value over Countermail.

Error-- I've had the same concern as you about whether GCHQ has the capability of spying on internet traffic exiting Air's U.K servers. It's highly unlikely I'll route my online traffic through the U.K servers anymore. (Same goes for Ukraine.) May there be a special place in hell for all of the British government officials who made the new spying law possible... and my genuine sympathy for the private internet users in the U.K now forced to deal with that outrage.

NaDre-- It's a pretty depressing and infuriating state of affairs what has happened in England. I'm hoping Scotland eventually tells London to suck it. If Air has to take it's servers out of the U.K at some point, perhaps relocating them in Ireland will help subscribers such as yourself. In the meantime, MAYBE it's safe to route your internet traffic through the U.K servers but I personally don't trust them now with the passage of that new snooping law. I'm sure the tech gurus here at Air are far more knowledgable about which countries are good candidates for locating servers, but I'm wondering if the following would be possible: Iceland; Venezuela; Bolivia; India; Greece; Finland; Norway; Bulgaria; Serbia; Bela Rus. (Those last 3 have rather authoritarian governments, but maybe something could be worked out? Again, just humble suggestions. By the way, is the possibility of having servers in Portugal again completely out of the question now?)

I know this article is almost 3 years old now, but any thoughts/opinions? My own humble take on it is the author could be a surveillance rat or at the very least a blanket shill to steer the uninformed & gullible to use Amerikan based email services. He uses a fair amount of weasel language in the article. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/switzerland-wont-save-you-either-why-e-mail-might-still-be-safer-in-us/

I'm considering renewing for 2 years if that's allowed.

Please pay very close attention to the brief last paragraph of the article. https://www.rt.com/op-edge/367537-uk-russia-spying-laws/

CoBras-- I mentioned this in a post in another thread, but there was a Dutch computer tech geek who was a guest a few years ago on The Keiser Report. According to this guy, if every private user would use a good VPN when getting online, it would be impossible for the NSA to try to break the encryption because of the expense involved. No, this is not an uncompensated endorsement of AirVPN, but it's okay with me if anyone wants to think so.

The hacktivist group Anonymous has a slogan: "We do not forgive. We do not forget." No offense to you at all, LZ1, but I'm not in a forgiving mood. The democratic party establishment is too inbred... too entrenched... in too deep with the donor class. I could go on but I'll stop there. The point is that I am SICK of reading about the wailing about what happened when they have only themselves to blame. But look-- it's okay. As long as the party elite continue to stay in their groupthink bubble inside the D.C. beltway and continue to demean and marginalize the progressive base... then they will continue to remain in the minority. The Clinton mafia and the elite, establishment bureaucracy got exactly what they deserve on Nov. 8th. And, yes-- I am thoroughly enjoying the schadenfreude.

A little something for the dummies crying about how the mainstream media stacked the deck totally against $hillary. http://observer.com/2016/11/mainstream-media-recap-who-colluded-with-the-clinton-campaign/amp/

Merely curious, but anyone out there have any opinions about this email service? https://runbox.com/

Being technically challenged, I'm still trying to learn about this stuff. Before signing up with Air about this time last year, I had been with Hide My Ass! for 2 years. (I know, I know.... try to go easy on me. I didn't know any better.) Like a lot of people who don't know much about the technical ins and outs about what REALLY counts in choosing a VPN, I loved that HMA! had so many servers in so many different countries around the world. (I really thought I was a big turd in the internet toilet!) I never had any problems with HMA!, they were nice when I had any questions. But with a few months left in the second year of my subscription I began to wonder if I could do better. Having plenty of time to do a lot of research I found out about Air. Even with my limited technical knowledge, an inner voice was telling me these folks were on to something. Anyway, as the end of my subscription to HMA! got closer, they must've sensed I was thinking hard about jumping ship; they tried HARD to get me to re-up with an enticing discount for renewing for another year... sending me super friendly reminders in emails to renew... the glowing advantages of remaining with HMA!. Believe it when I say they bent over backwards with their charm offensive to keep me. It didn't work. They never contacted me again after the final day of my subscription with them passed without me renewing. I swear to you I could almost sense their disappointment that they couldn't convince me to stay. MY only regret is that I didn't know about Air and used HMA! for 2 whole years. I just chalk it up as a part of the learning experience. Even with my limited technical knowledge, I figured out something very, very important about choosing a VPN and email service. I've pointed this out in a couple of posts in other threads, but I can't emphasize this enough-- if you live in the U.S. like I do, you would have to be BRAIN DEAD to use any VPN or email service based in the U.S. The best available privacy and security features understandably come at some price point.... and anything "free" is quite likely going to be worse than useless. Do your due diligence. Research thoroughly, and take your time doing it. If you seriously want the best, you'll find it. The one thing I can promise without hesitation is that positive word-of-mouth advertising is more valuable than gold.

What LZ1 said. : )

But why would a self respecting human being use Windows? ; )