McAfee Acquires VPN Provider TunnelBear

McAfee announced that it has acquired Canada-based virtual private network (VPN) company TunnelBear. From a report: Founded in 2011, Toronto-based TunnelBear has gained a solid reputation for its fun, cross-platform VPN app that uses quirky bear-burrowing animations to bring online privacy to the masses. The company claims around 20 million people have used its service across mobile and desktop, while a few months back it branched out into password management with the launch of the standalone RememBear app. [...] That TunnelBear has sold to a major brand such as McAfee won't be greeted warmly by many of the product's existing users. However, with significantly more resources now at its disposal, TunnelBear should be in a good position to absorb any losses that result from the transfer of ownership.

Well...

[ChodaBoyUSA]

RIP TunnelBear VPN. I won't touch ANYTHING with the name McAfee on it.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Uninstalled it from Chrome just now. When I did, it took me to a page to leave feedback. I left a comment that tried to make it clear (civilly) that selling out was an epic mistake. Others might enjoy installing this extension just for the joy of uninstalling it and sharing additional opinions...

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

You just typed the word McAfee. Better rip the A,C,E,F and M keys from your keyboard.

Get ready for the bundle!

[sabbede]

Because it won't be long before you're accidentally installing it along with McAfee Security Scan and TrueKey when you just want Adobe Reader.

it just died

[jbmartin6]

That TunnelBear has sold to a major brand such as McAfee won't be greeted warmly by many of the product's existing users.

Nor should it be, McAfee will cease any meaningful development on it until it languishes far behind the alternatives. And support will get worse and worse.

Re:

[rmdingler]

Are you saying McAfee will develop a Don't feed the bear policy?

Should of sold to

[Anonymous Coward]

With a name like TunnelBear they should have sold themselves to The Boring Company.

I'll see myself out...

Re:

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

I think it's odd enough that anyone would take a flyer on a security brand with "Bear" in the name with all the "Russia! Russia! Marsha! Russia!" talk recently.

Re:

[jbmartin6]

That's bearism and is not to be tolerated.

Re: Should of sold to

[bn-7bc]

Who is Maria and how do you know her(well by the form of here name you use), and whst does she have to do whith this?

The real question to ask:

[Kokuyo]

Will Linus Tech Tips drop TunnelBear as a sponsor or won't they?

Re:The real question to ask:

[EvilSS]

Only if they stop paying him.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[sexconker]

His audience is gaming and computing savvy.

Nope, his audience is tweens and early teens who don't know shit and love ridiculous clickbait.

Re:

[Kokuyo]

I am 36 but okay.

Re:

[EvilSS]

He just did a sponsored video for a vacuum cleaner. I don't think Tunnel Bear being owned by McAfee is going to sway him on rejecting their sponsorship and ad money.

"significantly more resources now at its disposal"

[mwvdlee]

significantly more resources now at its disposal

Since this is McAfee, this can be interpreted in multiple ways.
Most likely, it means the TunnelBear app will soon bloat to an obtrusive adware monster, using only 2GB RAM (while inactive).

Fixed a computer last week

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a brand new Win 10 laptop. Nothing had been installed. It wouldn't connect to the internet and moved at a crawl.

I finally managed to partially get it working by disabling all non-Microsoft services and programs at startup. I then "uninstalled" McAfee from the computer. After a reboot I noticed that there were still active McAfee services running. Some Googling revealed I needed to run the "McAfee Removal Tool" to get rid of this junk.

I ran "McAfee Removal Tool" for 20 minutes, which never completed,

Linus

[sexconker]

I'm Linus from Linus Tech Tips and it's time to talk about Tunnel Bear! Tunnel Bear is paying me money to tell you about Tunnel Bear! I'm a fucking clown that puts out awful clickbait shit on YouTube! Tunnel Bear!!

playbook for acquisitions

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the playbook:

- major shareholder- employees get 18 month handcuffs, then will quit

- g&a employees get whacked in next rolling RIF. At McAfee they're currently RIFs twice yearly

- in 18 months, product dev is shifted to Bangalore and remaining engineering is given the opportunity to find open reqs somewhere in the US

Innovation will stop once it's rebranded.

If the new TPG McAfee is anything like the pre Intel one.

Oh, the company. Not John.

[aussiekrom]

Because it might have made an interesting story if it had been.

But why?

[eneville]

Why would you use a VPN to do anything these days? The VPN offers nothing that a cheap throw away OpenVZ machine could, but at least with the OpenVZ you have some chance of knowing what the outbound traffic is doing, its much less likely that the provider is going to sniff you traffic.

Given there are more uses for a VPS than a VPN, I don't see the VPN market growing, this cannot be a good business move.

Re:

[pnutjam]

Unlimited bandwidth for a way lower price. I use pia for about $30 a year. I get access to more exit points, and I trust them more then verizon or xfinity.
They have no incentive to insert ads or share my browsing data with every advertiser, this is directly contrary to their business model. I'm sure they'd roll over for a warrant, but that's not the risk I'm mitigating.

McAfee is Intel

[HermMunster]

I've seen a couple of antivirus distributors include VPN as a choice in their offerings. Kaspersky is one of them. Avg is another. If you want to remain anonymous then don't use those from your VPN provider. Intel actively participates with the US government so using their VPN likely gives the US government access to your activities when using the VPN. I would question their av product as well.

Re:

[pnutjam]

US government is not the risk most VPN users are mitigating. File sharing is a civil issue and most of us are just trying to avoid being bundled into an advertisers portfolio by verizon, comcast, at&t, etc.

I don't know why the ISP's think it's their right and this should be a standard part of their business model, but as long as it is, I'll use a vpn.

Step 4 achieved

[Brockmire]

1. Start VPN company 2. ??? 3. ??? 4. Profit