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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.tunnelbear.com/account#/remove