TunnelBear Joins McAfee
tunnelbear.comI'll save some of you the task of searching through their FAQ if you want to cancel your account.
“We’re sorry but we can’t cancel your account automatically. Please contact support.”
Yeah...
I had the same issue, was hoping it was isolated to my account. What unfortunate timing.
Seemed so. I was just able to delete my account.
I also had no problem cancelling my account.
I retried. Still doesn’t work.
Looks like I’ll be forced into human to human interaction.
Last time that happened to me I just called the bank and told them to block payments. I think it was either stamps.com or siriusxm. Really no reason to prevent someone from cancelling right away... just a shady tactic to retain people.
Sounds like Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Bunch of wankers that want a 10 minute call just to cancel, you can't even cut them off 'listen mate, i just want to cancel and finish this call' as they don't process it. NEVER subscribe to WSJ even if you get 6 months free - there is no online cancellation and cunts refer to debt collection agencies for renewal fees.
Me too, I just did it without any issues :D
This is the opposite of privacy and you should be ashamed. You sold all of your customers’ info to Intel/McAfee at a price.
To add insult to injury, they collected tens of thousands of dollars in Q3 and Q4 of 2017 from the National Research Council of Canada:
$45,000 : https://nrc-cnrc.explorecatena.com/en/details/LOakjNa8v3uKlv...
$20,000 : https://nrc-cnrc.explorecatena.com/en/details/gk2Mb423DZh69n...
$20,000 : https://nrc-cnrc.explorecatena.com/en/details/wkBxj3BzKrhwr6...
I don't know why exactly, but that really pisses me off. I'd love to see the Feds go after them for that money, but I doubt Mr. Dress-up or his government would ever do such a thing.
I don't know how that suddenly became about slagging Trudeau, but the best bet would be to start with contacting the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development—Navdeep Bains—or the Minister of Science—Kirsty Duncan—or the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) directly.
Public scrutiny is precisely why the NRC is publishing immutable records of funding and grant allocations. The NRC claims to take their integrity in their work very seriously. Having been (co)founded by John Fields, they certainly have a reputation to maintain.
Why should they go after that money? Those look like normal startup grants to stimulate the local economy, and given that the TunnelBear team will keep expanding this seems to have worked just fine.
Sure, you might not like the ethics of their behaviour, but that has nothing to do with those grants.
They have a very detailed and plainly written privacy policy which details what information is gathered and how it is used. If their customers put a premium on privacy they should have read the privacy policy prior to using the service and understood Tunnelbear's obligations under it. As long as Tunnelbear has met them they have nothing to be ashamed of. It even addresses the possibility of being acquired and the impact that may have regarding the data they have collected.
"If our organization structure changes (i.e we undergo a restructuring or are acquired), we may need to migrate your Personal Information to a third party related to a business transaction, but, we will ensure that such a third party has entered into an agreement under which the use of your Personal Information is only related to purposes necessary for the transaction."
OK, so you’re blaming the customers for not carefully reading the privacy policy? I understand that people should read things, but they don’t. They read the marketing text where Tunnelbear claimed to “really really” care about privacy.
Further, they gave all of the personal information since it was all necessary for the transaction.
Unsustainable VPN companies that operate at low margins to sell to the highest bidder like this are the exact opposite of privacy conscious. :(
>If their customers put a premium on privacy they should have read the privacy policy prior to using the service and understood Tunnelbear's obligations under it
If you don't want to be poisoned you should read every food label of every food item you ever consume. Why make laws preventing manufacturers from poisoning some food when consumers can just read the label to find out which ones are poisoned!
We should have sensible defaults. Not this nonsense where it is seen as acceptable to screw over consumers with carefully worded legalese.
I wish I had your optimism. Rule of thumb is that all informal agreements go out the window after an acquisition. Why would the board of McAfee care about a policy they didn't approve and aren't legally bound to?
> ... we will ensure that such a third party has entered into an agreement under which the use of your Personal Information is only related to purposes necessary for the transaction.
Wow, that is the opposite of reassuring. The "purposes" could easily be "better profiling you to price insurance policies."
Most T&Cs aren't worth reading. They can be summed up as "by having seen this document, you have agreed to let us do whatever we want forever," and what really matters is whether such contracts are legally enforceable where you live.
I don’t believe intel owns mcafee anymore.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/intel-nears-deal-to-sell-m...
They mostly don't. They sold 51% of it to another firm, but still own 49%.
Imagine having this much conviction in a personal fantasy despite the opposite being legally documented.
RIP marketing department budget at Linus Tech Tips
That was my first thought too, I hope Linus will talk about it at some point. They seem transparent and upfront about their income.
I don't see them keeping TB around as a sponsor after this. Pretty darn bad press.
Yeah I'm sure they'll mention this in the upcoming WAN show, they've been pretty upfront about income, the titles and thumbnails, etc
WAN show should be interesting.. Brought to you by Tunnel Bear!
I wonder how they'll deal with spots already being paid for.
I don't know what all you Tunnelbear users were thinking. Do you believe other commercial VPN services are doing a better job of protecting your privacy? Spoiler: they are not. Commercial VPN services offer the safety of coffee shop open wi-fi, in The Cloud, from the convenience of your own couch.
Stop using commercial VPN providers.
Honestly, at least now they have the McAfee security team working for them. There are better teams, but anything is better than getting a single point-in-time audit and slapped "independently audited" on your front page.
I think there is something different here.
We at Private Internet Access have walked away from countless buyout offers over the past years for hundreds of millions. Every time it happens, we turn around and donate to another non profit org we appreciate.
I think it’s better advice to say that your threat model should take many things into consideration. Some people are better with a commercial VPN. Some are not. To each person in their own individual circumstance there are different needs. Your blanket advice is dangerous. It is important for everyone to do due diligence, remain skeptical, and do what is right for your threat model.
We are honest and go to work everyday with the challenge of your privacy and the increasing national surveillance state in mind. We could log, but we don't. We are against the concept and our actions have shown we do everything we can to fight the system that would try to have us log, too.
In an open world where software is open source and all users and skeptics can check the source code, you can't say that the McAfee security team is a better team than the entire open source community.
Currently, commercial VPN providers do require trust; and we recognize that. That is why PIA is working to disintermediate that trust - this is our end goal and we are VERY close.
Stay tuned.
> Stop using commercial VPN providers.
What would you recommend, BYO?
For BYO, you might consider Algo VPN https://github.com/trailofbits/algo -- it gets IPSec right -- or, if you're feeling more bleeding-edge, WireGuard.
I've been using similar project called Streisand: https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand
It's easy to set up on Azure and has Wireguard built-in.
+1 Wireguard, much simpler than OpenVPN is my experience.
Do any of the planned clients exist yet, for WireGuard? Without that, it’s not all that useful to most people.
No. WireGuard, right now, is mostly useful to people who can run Linux (or people who want site-to-site VPNs). There's a cross-platform userland client in progress; a couple different organizations (us included) have kicked in to fund it.
Yeah I've heard that but the Wireguard site never seems to say much about it. Is this happening somewhere outside the Wireguard repo/main project?
No, I think it's more that Jason is a serious engineer and researcher and not as serious a marketer. It'll get better over time.
Hmm, not really important but I looked at it again and I don't think whatever is happening on the userspace client front is going on in their server repo.
I just set this up this week its so easy and works really well. It took less than 10 minutes.
Also looks really good, thanks.
> Stop using commercial VPN providers.
At the very least, don't use the free ones.
Whelp, that singlehandedly kills any credibility tunnerlbear had in my mind. I hope the buyout was worth it guys. The exact market for services like tunnelbear are the same ones that avoid the likes of mcafee (the company) like the plauge. I can see them jumping like rats from a burning ship. They should just find a new name at this point, ala comcast, blackwater, etc. Even their literal namesake disses them publicly.
Whilst they probably lost a certain market, they certainly gained another one, and I'm not convinced it's a net loss as a business.
Once this reaches Mcafee.com (as opposed to tunnelbear.com) I am entirely confident executives will inform me the product is an important part of our security strategy. At some future point, there will probably be a Gartner Quadrant rating them highly.
McAfee has a poor name on HN, but this isn't generally reflected in business. This should be self evident- they'd be broke if it was.
I don't see how this purchase changes anything. How was "TunnelBear: an independent VPN provider" ever any more trustworthy than "TunnelBear: A service from McAffee"?
In both cases, I have no idea what they're actually doing with my info.
Nice while it lasted. Any alternative recommendations for less tech-oriented folks? TunnelBear has been what I pointed friends and relations towards historically.
Mullvad (https://mullvad.net/en/) is the highest rated VPN service by That One Privacy Site[0] and it's pretty easy to use.
It's what I use, check it out!
[0] https://thatoneprivacysite.net/2017/10/03/mullvad-review/
I’ve been using Mullvad for a few months and it’s been working pretty well so far—no complaints here. Not sure if it’s standard practice, but I really dig the passwordless account number only login.
I'll give another +1 for Mullvad. They're servers are damn fast too, for what it's worth, on top of a pretty great privacy policy.
I've been using them for a year or so, and I've never had a complaint. Good range of servers, nice speeds.
Private Internet Access is my suggestion given their support of EFF, FFTF, Creative Commons, as well as the greater FOSS community.
Full disclosure: I work at Private Internet Access.
Can second PIA. Used it for years now and its solid. And I'm not affiliated in any way with it, just a happy customer
Thirded, used for years and have never had a problem with their service.
Can second this. I switched to NordVPN because of their design (PIA needs a branding and design overhaul), but really regret it as PIA was fast, stable, generally great.
I've been a PIA customer for a year and a half with no complaints. I'm not a VPN power user by any means but it's been solid for me the whole time and haven't had any reason to look elsewhere.
Also use it, no real complaints. Can't speak for the software since I'm manually connecting. Speeds are decent, but can be slow.
Been using PIA for a few years now and it's pretty fantastic. I leave it on 24/7 and only sometimes notice peak hour speed drops.
Background: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29
Best recommendation: Get a cheap server from LowEndBox and setup OpenVPN (or, hopefully in 2019, WireGuard) for your less tech-oriented friends.
That'll only get you a single IP in a single country though.
If you need rotating IP addresses, in various jurisdictions, why would you even be looking at VPN services? Just use Tor.
The use case there is: I need to fool this one site's geo restrictions into thinking that I'm from this particular country, but only for the time it takes me to get what I need from this site. Tor doesn't really serve this type of requirement.
I like Encrypt.me (Formally cloak). https://encrypt.me/
They don't pretend a VPN is going to keep you anonymous (https://encrypt.me/what-is-vpn/) but rather pitch their platform as a way to stay protected while at coffeeshops and public networks.
Mullvad. Read through their FAQ to understand exactly what kind of company they are. Great company ethos, plenty of international servers to choose from, wireguard integration, multiple crypto payment options... pretty nice.
These guys are great: https://encrypt.me
I used them when I was freelancing and working on public wifi. Super easy to use and reliable.
Heads-up: Encrypt.me logs your IP address when connecting!
Which they are very upfront about, and if you are only using it to connect over public wifi I don’t see any big issues with it.
I've found NordVPN very good and easy to use: https://nordvpn.com/
For what it's worth, I regret switching to NordVPN. It's unstable for me (it can drop out during peak times and I regularly have to switch server), their Mac software isn't great (struggles to reconnect on wake, poor UI, Electron app), I get random European endpoints despite always choosing the UK (meaning I can't use iPlayer which is region locked to the UK), and it's very slow compared to my previous provider (I have an 80Mb connection and NordVPN is definitely the limiting factor, probably cutting my speed by 30%).
I was with Private Internet Access before and will either switch back to them or possibly to TunnelBear in the near future I think. The last 6 months with NordVPN has been pretty terrible.
I agree. NordVPN is nice most of the time (at least for me), but its UI is clunky and incredibly slow when searching for a particular server. I've also been experiencing major connection issues over the past few months, so that's been annoying to say the least.
They charged my card long after I'd already canceled and changed providers. Eventually got a refund, but I shouldn't have needed one in the first place.
Agree and price with 3 year deal is unbeatable https://nordvpn.com/special/specialdeal
Note that the Linux support is "meh" (no client software)
It's still possible to setup by copy pasting a config file and downloading openvpn- but not as convenient as the regular application.
Also important: "TunnelBear is now part of McAfee, a US based company" =
customer information can be subject to US court orders.
I can't wait for the mcafee themed bear photos! Bears on drugs , bears hiding in Mexico, and bears trying to sell you cryptocurrencies in back alleys.
You do realize he hasn't been involved with the company since the 90s?
FWIW, I'm pretty sure the market segment of tunnelbear users were people dodging network restrictions, not people who valued privacy much.
That aside, there are exceptions and someone is getting fucked over.
Tried them until they implemented the policy to block the torrent protocol. WHY. WOULD. YOU. DO. THAT. TUNNELBEAR. That's a legit protocol where legit downloads happen barring the overwhelming illegal activity that happens there.
F*, just renewed at $49.99 for a year.
Cancelling automatically downgrades, how unreasonable.
Someone should let Linus (the Tech Tips one) know. Not sure if he'd want to be endorsing tunnel bear now that its owned by McAfee.
Well, goodbye nice looking VPN.
I don't get this kind of purchases. If McAfee intends to just let TunnelBear be TunnelBear, then what they're after must the business (as in the profit). In that case would there be more business sense in not selling, from the TunnelBear perspective?
Edit: Also TunnelBear isn't joining McAfee, or I doubt that they are. McAfee BOUGHT them. Joining implies that you merged the two businesses with no money changing hands.
> Joining implies that you merged the two businesses with no money changing hands.
Not at all. Saying you "joined" a company is often used as a less transactional (that is, warm and fuzzy, not cold and financial) way of saying you were acquired.
Joining implies that you merged the two businesses with no money changing hands.
Not in typical usage because that typically doesn't happen.
A sale like this can allow the owners to cash out immediately many years of would-be profit. It's always an asymmetrical transaction, one side here thinks they can come out ahead, or just has different priorities.
The last time I joined a team or a company, I didn't merge with them.
There are lots of legal implications when one company buys another, even if they don't merge. But these implications go both ways, so it can get funny with things like GDPR.
IMHO all users should consider switching to some reputable VPN with no logs policy https://vpnspecial.com/tunnelbear-has-just-been-purchased-be...
Why does Intel wants TunnelBear?
I dont see the logic behind this, any one could explain?
P.S Is anyone still using McAfee ? It seems Symantec has taken up most of the enterprise sales, while consumer are happy with Windows default protection.
Intel no longer owns McAfee, they were spun out a year and a half ago. https://venturebeat.com/2016/09/07/intel-teams-with-tpg-to-s...
Lots and lots of people still use McAfee. Symantec's management products are still light years behind McAfee. Symantec really wasted a big opportunity with what they did to Altiris.
We use Mcafee where I work, and have done for over 10 years. It's still a massive resource hog that has my high-end laptops permanently sounding like they're going to take off.
In all seriousness, it probably contributes to power bills and global warming!
Given the choice, wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.
We're using McAfee where I work, which should cover 2100 emplyees, perhaps more if the parent company (Assa Abloy) is using it too. It is also used to scan the files during the build process of our deliverables, which easily add hours to a full rebuild.
The company I work for still uses McAfee. This company has 50,000 employees.
Coincidentally, the U.S. Government is a pretty big McAfee customer.
I don’t understand why people used them they didn’t had an explicit no logging no retention policy and they are located well within the reach of the US legal system as they were a Canadian company.
Because my threat model is a Wifi pineapple. I don't need protection from the entire Internet and all the governments of the world. I want to make sure an overzealous college kid isn't stealing my cookies.
And there were much better and cheaper companies for that like NordVPN and VyprVPN.
Neither of them would protect you against governments that much, but they do protect your privacy.
Do you want another place where all your data has been logged? I bet McAfee will have a field day with all the data tunnelbear has accumulated over the years.
Canceled my subscription.
If you can't trust a goofy bear who can you really trust then?
If you think about it all the goodwill Tunnelbear had was built on quirky/irreverent front end client.
Someone tell Linus Tech Tips
I'll save you the trouble of ctrl+f'ing:
"We’d like to thank you for being part of the journey so far, and we look forward to sharing more about our plans in the coming weeks."
This one was only a regular journey though. Must have been less money than the usual buyouts
Perhaps it was still incredible by previous years standards, but it did not keep up with the journey inflation?
Only opened the article to find information on their journey.. looks like they haven't finished their trip yet.
Came here just for this, thanks for doing your part o7
TunnelBear never had good security. It's Canadian HideMyAss. Well, it was.