VPNSecure is the company.
Odd how they didn’t just put that in the title.
Guessing it was a force copy title for the sub and the article wanted you to click. They put it in the body of the post at least.
Oh boy. Someone dig up the Tumblr post I gotta go to bed.
no no no nonononono come back and post it
What’s odd is that it’s not in the Wired headline either, this is a direct copy of their headline.
Because zero-click internet kills the revenue model. It’s unfortunate, but understandable until something better comes along.
Would love to see a co-op model spring up where views on sites like Lemmy generate revenue for publications without the click. I.E. pay $1 a month to a shared fund that’s distributed by percentage.
That would require us to pay for Lemmy, right? Or how do you mean? Where would the money come from, sort of?
This is also why if you hit the lottery, you should take the discounted upfront cash payout, and not get it paid in an annual annuity for 20 years. You never know if the government is suddenly going become moral about gambling, and cancel all lottery payments.
Take the money and run.
To be fair, it’s best to not participate in the lottery.
True but that is a situation that doesn’t really apply very often in the “if you hit the lottery” situation mentioned in the post you replied to.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re being smart about the lottery by thinking about which is the smarter course of action in case of a win. The only way to be smart about the lottery is to not play.
The only way to be smart about the lottery is to not play.
I don’t disagree, but I also thing playing the lottery once in a while is fine if you’re just doing it as a daydream or something. Back when I worked in an office, if the jackpot got high enough we’d do an office pool and everyone that wanted to would throw in 10 bucks or something. And I’ve also done the same myself for the above reason but I play at most once or so a year.
That’s the responsible way to enjoy it! But you can’t have any expectations that it’s a good idea beyond having fun with it. And I find that sometimes these posts about how to do the lottery in the smartest way possible kind of detract from the fact that it’s wrong and possibly harmful to think that it’s anything aside from a potentially fun thing to do.
Also because that lump sum is all there is. If you take the annuity they put the lump sum into an investment account and then pay you out of the proceeds (from which they take a cut, of course), and you can get the same returns they get, without losing their cut, doing it yourself.
Absolutely. However, if you are not the best with money, or on the irresponsible side; it might be best to take the annuity. Mathematically it makes no sense to do so, but if it stops you from blowing it all on hookers and coke in two years then its for the best. In other words, if you having it all is riskier than the state keeping track of it.
Even if you’re bad with money, take the lump sum and go get a fiduciary advisor to handle it and give you a regular payout. Being a fiduciary advisor is important since it means they are legally obligated to work to the benefit of your money, not lining their pockets. Using something like a trust is another good way to protect you from yourself.
I mean more like someone who is irresponsible and maybe dumb. I was trying to be polite. Someone that doesnt even know what a fidicuary is.
What’s wrong with hookers and coke?
Nothing… the real issue is all the other money you wasted.
Can’t you open up a trust with the money and put a provision on it saving you from yourself?
Sure you can… but that would mean you are responsible with money ahah
I learned my lesson about “lifetime” thanks to SiriusXM.
When Howard Stern got lured to SiriusXM they offered a deal where you buy the receiver and pay $500 for a lifetime subscription with unlimited transfers to different receivers. Fat forward to 2017ish when I bought my last car that had the receiver built into the radio and tried to transfer to the new one. I was told that was the last time I would be able to do that and in the future I’d be paying a $75 transfer fee and be forced into a monthly subscription.
Lifetime is a hoax.
Lifetime is a hoax.
No, it’s fraud.
The difference is that one is a funny joke and the other is a criminal act that ought to land corporate executives in prison, if the US weren’t an oligarchy too corrupt to prosecute.
This may be your lucky day then! You can likely use that lifetime sub now!
I did the Sirius lifetime deal a few years offered before the one you did (in 2003 I think?). At the time they called it the “Friends and Family” promotion. It was only $300 at the time for lifetime sub, and they gave you the hardware for free. I’m still using that same lifetime sub today.
I was told that was the last time I would be able to do that and in the future I’d be paying a $75 transfer fee and be forced into a monthly subscription.
This was absolutely true this was the rules at one point. However there was a rule change (via lawsuit maybe?) that allows UNLIMITED TRANSFERS and the fee is only $35/transfer. Its even on the SiriusXM website FAQ:
“Please note: You may transfer an active Lifetime Subscription to another radio an unlimited number of times. For each permitted transfer of a Lifetime Subscription, you will be charged a $35 transfer fee, and the transfer must be effectuated through your Online Account.” source
Your account is likely still alive with your name on it! Contact them and get back into it!
Further, back when you and I bought our lifetime subs the SiriusXM streaming service didn’t exist. It is actually pretty robust now. With your lifetime sub (even without it being on a vehicle), you have full access to unlimited commercial free streaming in their best quality bitrate (there was a time that they offered reduced bitrates for lifetime users but that’s gone now too).
For me, because of a further discount I only paid $230 for my lifetime sub because I got a credit for my previous monthly service and I’ve now had it for over 22 years. So if you do the math, I’m paying 87 cents per month for full in-car and streaming SiriusXM. Lifetime deal was SO worth it!
This is absolutely disgusting behavior. “Cannot honor the purchases,” my ass.
I feel like “the new middle ages” really was a correct description of our time. Well, we’re at the dawn of it. All our universal rights and universal truths are going to be subject to who’s holding the dagger at your throat, and we’ll have theocracies, family republics and feudal lords again. The blooming diversity of hell.
OK, this is a bit offtopic, just one can see such behavior in all areas today where they wouldn’t be normal 30 years ago.
I propose “the new dark ages” might be more appropriate.
To be fair to the new owners the previous ones never mentioned the lifetime subscriptions existed and they were sinking the company. Probably the reason the original owners sold in the first place.
It was obviously a cash grab from the company before fucking off, you can’t reasonably expect a lifetime vpn for 30 bucks. Either it eventually gets repriced, or they start mining all your information like every other “free” vpns.
Yeah this looks to me like everyone got scammed, including the new owners.
Yet that was exactly what they sold, this is not too blame in the customer. They built a subscriber base on those purchases which is capital to them.
They need to uphold the contract that they entered in to.
They also said that they were cancelling lifetime contracts that hadn’t been used in 6 months. Hard to see how those could be sinking the company.
Correct.
This is just bullshit being said so the owners can make more money.
Every single person you see who believes it and perpetuates it is a useful idiot.
Due diligence what…?
That’s not being fair to the new owners.
It’s the company buyer’s responsibility to make sure they know about and honor existing contracts with the existing company, and it’s the company’s responsibility to provide that information to the buyer.
It is not ANYONE else’s responsibility to make them follow that. If something like this happens, the company(whether before or after the purchase) was in the wrong.
If the previous owner specifically make sure they do not know about that because they made a quick cash grab, how exactly do you imagine they should know about this?
Not the customer’s problem. Also, fraud.
But probably failure of due diligence because any seller who’s not a complete idiot would rather let the sale fail and let the company go bankrupt than risk committing fraud.
Yes, name and shame the suckers already in the headline so they get what they deserve! VPN SECURE , yeah, right.
This is going to be Plex Pass in a few years if Plex sells out even more
This is why the first question is, is it open source?
I’ve had a lifetime Plex pass for many years. I have converted completely over to Jellyfin after trying it.
It’s more involved to set up for secure remote access, but once in place it is so much smoother to use.
Why would anyone be stupid enough to not honor them? Now, even if they backtrack, their name is mud. It’s so stupid.
Damn straight. I never heard of this company before but you can bet your life I will never do business with them.
They will just change their name in 6 months. They all just get bought and sold non stop so you cant research if they are good or not. Kind of like those one apartments near a college that always change names and colors to trick freshmen into leasing with them.
Especially when we are talking about VPNs. The reason so many companies are sprouting out of the ground to offer VPNs is because the margin they have is huge.
I think a company like this is not planning to linger for years. The owners wanna make a buck for a year or two and then sell it off. If they can stiff their customers in the process, they just don’t care.
For long-lasting companies the motivation would be different. But this is not a world-famous VPN company, not by a long shot.
I mean it seems to happen pretty often. The Curiosity Nebula mess, Crunchyroll had a $10 for the lifetime of your account thing but when Sony bought them they started messing with it. Even Google tried it with Google App domains free tier which they promised for life. I think everyone said fu to the buyout and just waited for the class action until Google blinked at the last minute.
I assume Plex will find a way to start charging lifetime purchasers any day now.
At this point I look for them just to see what sort of train wreck it’ll turn into.
Lifetime services/updates are always a scam. The economics of this are really simple: Nebula is $30 per year or $300 lifetime. That lifetime membership covers only 10 years of subscription. So what’s the plan after that? There’s only really three outcomes:
- They stop providing you service
- They go bankrupt trying to provide you service
- They grow and stay big enough to be able to subsidize your service for your lifetime. I can’t overstate how unlikely this is.
Buying a lifetime membership you’re gambling that Nebula will grow big enough that other people’s subscription will pay for your service. Your membership is a liability for them.
It’s also bad from the other end. Lots of small software devs will sell lifetime updates but eventually need to abandon their products because they simply run out of money.
A service continually costs money to provide. You can’t pay for that with a single payment. Lifetime services are simply incompatible with running a business long term. It’s a bad idea and someone is always getting screwed.
$300 today is quite a bit more valuable than $30 for 10 years.
nope, nope, nope! buy a business, own it’s debt and contracts. CLASS ACTION SUIT!
This is also why I stopped prepaying for things. Sure I’m spending $50 more a year but at least I have flexibility.
Agency… people need to be more mindful when they are giving it up. It leads to bad places unless you know what you are doing.
It’s BS they didn’t know about it. They got the financials before the deal. Even if it wasn’t directly listed as a line item it would have been a part of the expenses.
They still thought the deal was worth doing as it was based on incoming revenue and outgoing expenses.
Is this even legal? I mean people paid for the lifetime version.
They should be refunded tbh.
No, they should get their lifetime membership. They paid the money for the membership because the membership was worth more than the money to them.
A refund on its own is never good enough because of gains from trade. The company broke a contract.
If the new owners purchased the assets, name, and technology and not the company itself, then it’s beholden on the remains of the old company to honour the deal… Good luck with that.
How many people start companies, rack up a bunch of debt, then create another company that buys everything except the debt?
NOW you’re getting it.
This is the exact reason GM still exists.
Which is a problem of the legal system around it.
Within most(or all) EU countries this would count as a continuation of business and all previous liabilities (e.g. employees contracts, customers contracts, etc.) would need to be honored.
Why it is done this way? To prevent people from doing exact that.
Except what you’re describing doesn’t make sense. If the new owners purchased all of those things, then in reality they purchased the company. Courts are very likely to agree on this. It looks like a company-wide sale, therefore it probably is, even if someone tries to add a line saying “we aren’t liable”.
But imagine someone could “sell everything other than the liability”. In such a case, the seller would be putting themselves on the hook to pay outstanding debts (i.e., the seller would be liable). And we know they have money – they just sold the thing. So then the seller would pay… But they know that in advance, so they would not agree to such a sale in the first place, unless they were planning to steal that money through creative accounting of some kind… But both parties know all of that that in advance, so they would both be acting fraudulently.
There’s probably some fine print in the ToS that says they can do this. It may or may not be legal but that makes it a lengthier court battle to try to prove.
There are so many ways they can put the squeeze on. Session time limit, throttle fraffic, restrict usage times etc.
Then you can sell a monthly VPN+ subscription and offer revisiting lifetime users 2 years free if they move to the new “better” service.
I’m not saying I agree with any of this, but it’s certainly not a new strategy. They’ve nothing to lose. Those who are pissed off will leave, you already have their money and those who want to stay will pay up.
The VPN company can have their cake and eat it
I have bought a lifetime VPN for 15$ in 2018 or 19, still kicking :)
Dang, whio’s it from?
Someone selling their data probably
but now they charge 200 usd for it
vpnunlimited
I’m still salty about Cerberus’ ‘lifetime’ subscription
Me TOO!! i sent emails to support, posted on a google forums thread, this was like what, 13 years ago already?, eventually the thread got deleted, reach out to google support, they told me to take it with them, they never ever replied. so since then i never purchased a “lifetime” of anything
fuck them.
the app was very good though, and while typing this i got myself worked out and realized im still livid
edit: bought cerberus un 2015, got the
Hi xta, Your Cerberus license will expire soon. If you want to continue to use our services please consider buying a license. Click here to buy a license through secure payment! Thank You The Cerberus Team
email on late dec 2019.
Same here. I made them refund me and then delete my account. It was a small amount, but I was pissed enough that I wanted them to work for it.
I had forgotten about that. Now I’m angry again.
My ex cyber security firm did this recently. They gave out forever licenses. But slowly changed things that if you didn’t set up an email with your license. You couldn’t renew it. So once you replaced a device your lifetime membership was gone. They recently completely removed the code input for licensing. So I am no longer able to use my lifetime license I got from working there. Pretty scummy stuff. But the CEO is a drunk. So what do you expect? He fucked up the attempted IPO and did a share replacement strategy instead. Which is probably killing the company.
How do you not know? Do your due diligence lol.
