The article says it is "Company 2: OxyData.Io (OXY)"* (http://oxydata.io)

OxyData and OxyLabs seem to be sister companies[1]: the former sells data as a product, the latter sells scraping as a service.

[1] https://vpnscam.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/2018-08-24-09...

Tesonet is true cancer. I am amazed how unethical (and successful) they are.

Knowing how quickly it's expanding, do the employees are just as unethical or they do not connect the dots (company got too big)?

I hate fb, et al as any other person here, but most of people know that "if it's free - you are the product". Though with NordVPN users are paying money and are getting stabbed in the back.

> do the employees are just as unethical

Most people's ethics are easily bought. Does working for a company that operates with questionable integrity outweigh providing a stable income for your family?

Remember Facebook is still a very highly desirable company to work at.

> NordVPN users are paying money and are getting stabbed in the back.

could you please expand on this claim?

From the comment they replied to: https://vpnscam.com/

"My name is Ripoff Reporter." For all that their schtick is about how they're "educating" the public about how shady VPN services are this could be anyone, including a front for a VPN service that isn't mentioned on the site.

How is that possible? LinkedIn blocked mining the data this way several years ago.

Is it still possible if you pay LinkedIn enough? Or is this old data?

It is strictly impossible to "block mining data" on the public web. Double that if the miner has free access to a pool of residential IPs.

[source: experience]

A large number residential proxies and fake LinkedIn accounts would look the same to LinkedIn as normal browsing.

There's information on the leak that wouldn't be widely available without accessing LinkedIn data using their APIs. Phone numbers and emails, for example.

The article mentions it is a blend of data from http://oxydata.io/ and https://www.peopledatalabs.com/

Both are aggregators that get data from many sources, correlate them, and sell it. The phone numbers and emails could have come from anywhere.

See this screenshot from PeopleDataLabs: https://d1ennknj6q36vm.cloudfront.net/images/cblead.png

I'm a nordvpn user. Practices like this scares me though. I guess it's time to switch to a new vpn?

Ah... but that is very inconvenient :( I guess comfort comes at a cost.

Is there at least a less shady provider if I would like to compromise myself but a bit less than nordvpn? How far do we go in assuming all are bad?

Mullvad seems trustworthy (I used to share an office with one of their IT infrastructure staff), but it is impossible to say for sure.

You could set up your own VPN on a server you run.

Yes. This. And is free to setup on big cloud services. Like free 24/7 with whatever amount of data. Guides are online.

All the way. It isn’t as if all VPN providers are part of a shadowy cabal to steal your data from an otherwise valuable service; the very premise of commercial VPNs is flawed. Any VPN service is inherently harmful.