Xerobank questions ?

There are two account numbers -- deposit and access. Supposedly, neither is based on IP address. Of course, they know what IP address(es) connect using each access account number. But, when creating the deposit|access account pair, they supposedly don't retain the relationship thereafter. If that's the case, there's no useful information that they could provide to DalPay about abusive access accounts that had been cancelled.

You're half right. They don't advise DalPay, because they can't (by design). Google VAULTS.

As I understand it, credits are left in the drop box, just as before. It's just that no access account exists to collect them. And there's no way to know whether they've been collected or not.

 

I believe this is what Hierophant is referring to with "VAULTS."

Interview with Topletz:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/52958

(Q) How is it anonymous if your financial information is attached?

Great question. Unfortunately, the answer is slightly technical. We designed a new technology called VAULTS, which stands for Variable Anonymous User Letterbox Token System. VAULTS allows you to buy "tokens" using a real identity (the Deposit Card), and drop the tokens off in the "letterbox". Your anonymous account (the Access Card) is the only one that can pick it up and redeem it for services. The transaction is one-way, meaning that we can´t find out which Deposit Card funded an Access Card; that is something only the Deposit Card holder knows.​

Did these cards ever exist? There's a picture at the link and I'm guessing it was a prototype of a system that was talked about but (surprise) never implemented.

By the way, lest you think XB, in the link above, was being featured in some big national media outlet, here is the scoop on user-generated "news" at the American Chronicle. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/108854/wanna_get_listed_on_google_news_use.html

 

Check out Grails - Xerobank.

The deposit and access numbers exist. The cards are just a metaphor, I believe.

 

@ LockBox

Thanks for the link

So they can if they want to. What if a USA etc court, and/or the CIA/NSA/FBI etc, made them an offer they couldn't refuse, like in the Godfather. Would they turn, would you ?

*

Well all that sounds very reassuring anyway

Even though i'm still not 100% sure about XB's impartiality under any/all circumstances, in ST's defense i'll say this. If the whole XB operation is coded/run/maintained etc etc in many countries by just a handful of people, maybe even just one for most of the time, then if it were me, i think i might go AWAL/MIA now and then, with all that techy work. Sure disserting customers ain't good or nice, but i can see the other side of the coin.

I'd love to be able see ST and XB proven to be 100% trustable, sooner rather than later, if that's at all possible. Apart from turncoating etc, my main concerns were with "some" "overseas" connections, business and/or private, and how ST/XB would stand up, or not, against ANY overt/covert requests from these connections for info/data etc, from people etc they considered err, maybe not friendly and/or might have stuff they want ?

 

To whom would they make that offer? I doubt that Steve knows anything useful.

Perhaps this is relevant. I'm not, BTW, claiming that XeroBank is a customer. However, Steve has made similar claims re administration of XeroBank routers.

We shall see

 

Who knows ? Anyone connected with the operation/s i expect.

But that wouldn't stop "them" trying and asserting "pressure" etc.

*

Hello

 

Yes. I have no clue how he lives with that.

 

I tried the service and quit it after a couple of days. Check out the review by www.bestvprnreviews.com
Xerobank really sucks...

 

As I wrote before I tried Xerobank and quit a short time later. Its just open vpn open source technology with nothing special but they do stuff to you that I couldnt fathom. Read the review about them in www.bestvpnreviews.com and tell me what you think.

 

@ herr

Thanks for the links, quite revealing !

Xerobank (XB) VPN Review

http://bestvpnreviews.com/vpn-reviews/xerobank-xb-vpn-review

CryptoHippie VPN Review

http://bestvpnreviews.com/vpn-reviews/cryptohippie-vpn-review

 

What? XeroBank sells “scam University dissertations”? More information, please....

 

Yes, as I've noted, that site's reviews are clearly unreliable.

 

I am nobody's sock puppet (on Wilders, anyway). Altogether, I believe that any unbiased observer would consider me neutral re XeroBank. You, OTOH, have an incredibly obvious and over-the-top anti-XeroBank agenda. I'm sure that we're all dying to know what Steve did that offended you so. Really.

I'll get to the laundry list response later. Have patience, please.

Edit: Gak, reading that review was painful. I'm running out of patience with the rabid XeroBank haters. Anyway, here are my comments.

I have no clue what "links to scam businesses" and "fake dissertations" the reviewer saw in XeroBank's Quickstart New User Guide. I've never seen any such links. Perhaps the reviewer was running malware on their machine.

There's clear disclosure re monthly billing on the checkut page: "XeroBank Personal Account (recurring monthly) 35.00 USD". And there's no extra billing for extra bandwidth; that's total fabrication.

Nobody with any sense would use an anonymous VPN for making PayPal and credit card payments -- unless they were using stolen accounts

Huh? I presume that the reviewer refers to the LEA policy. If so, the comment makes no sense, given that said LEA policy is rather "in your face", IMHO.

That's the case for ANY IP-anonymization approach. It's a side-channel attack.

 

Hmm....I never saw that Thesis writing thing when I installed Xerobank...

I've reinstalled Xerobank a few times and I'm positive it's never asked me for my Windows logon. In fact I will reinstall it again now to verify that.

I re-read their TOS and privacy policy, and I can't find this claim you make anywhere:

However this is clearly stated on their TOS:

"XeroBank does not log client activities or IP addresses when using the XeroBank anonymizing network, unless required by law, or unless an automated process has flagged traffic as being potentially malicious;"


And using these as negative points against Xerobank in your review!??:

Your first point is so ridiculous, it's not even worth commenting on.

Edit: Actually I will comment on it: A certain well-known company calling themselves an apple without a license suggests a certain pattern of behavior. See how that works?


The second:

So if they used a US payment provider, then you could claim that's bad because the US is in the process of being looted by offshore banks, and trillions of dollars have been siphoned out of the country?!? Like that has anything to do with them?!? There is not one good billing agency or other business in all of Iceland? The entirety of Iceland is bad because the big banks have looted it?!? Wow.

By the way Dalpay is NOT A BANK.

As for your claim that Xerobank is catering to law enforcement by what they say on their law enforcement page: https://xerobank.com/company/leo/

Note that their second sentence says:

"Note that Xerobank does not create logs of user activities unless they violate the Xerobank terms of service or appear malicious."

The eighth sentence says:

"Should your investigation conflict with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or is a clandestine intelligence request, or should you fail to produce credible evidence or reasonable and substantial suspicion, we will file an according complaint " (my emphasis)

Yeah sure sounds like they cater to LEA. Again, wow.

As for your saying they have poor speeds, well I easily get over 2MB/s (megabytes).

and:

WTF?!? Wow. Where are you getting this from!??

This has NOTHING to do with Xerobank, and is directly related to how geolocation with WiFi works.

It's my understanding that if you exceed your monthly bandwidth allowance (75gb/month), that you can only use the "turbo privacy" - Single hop nodes until the next month.


I could go on, but I think I'll stop here.

Honestly the only negative things I've found with Xerobank - and I've been using them for about 2 years now - is the horrible customer service (which I've never actually had to use, I've just seen the results of it in these forums, and the Xerobank forums).

Steve's noticeable absence and the complete silence on the Xerobank forums is also worrying, and has made me consider canceling my account and finding anther VPN. However Herr's review is just incredibly bad.


edit: I just found this in Herr's review as well:

This is not true. You can easily set it to start up with Windows. And by several clicks, do you mean double clicking on the desktop icon?!? Or do you mean right-clicking the icon on the taskbar, and then left-clicking on the particular node you want to take? Both are 2 clicks, which I believe is the standard for starting or restarting any program. I hope you don't restart your web browser often.

 

With Windows 7 in max(security) mode, it won't start XeroBank at boot unless you give it your password. Or, at least, that was so when I tried it. I recall talk of running as a service, and don't know whether that happened. These days, I only run XeroBank and other VPNs in Ubuntu.

 

XeroBank/theses writing services

-http://support.xerobank.com/wiki/doku.php?id=quickstart_guide_for_new_users-

 

Oh, my -- it is true: the XeroBank QuickStart Guide for New Users does in fact have a link to “thesis writing services.” However, I believe the guide is out-of-date, replaced by the current New User Guide.

Nonetheless, even if the association has been terminated, the fact that it existed at one time is extremely troubling.

 

Wow. Okay, you are turning out to be more and more of a kook as time goes by. What VPN service is it that you said that you work for?

 

LOL!....They give hidemyass a 4 star review, better that cryptohippie and Xerobank.

They give VPN4all a whopping 5 star rating. Maybe this is who Poser works for.

http://bestvpnreviews.com/top-3-vpn-services/vpn4all-basic-review

 

Well, it might be that I never bothered to read the new user guide.

 

That's a little overwrought, no? Isn't it likely that XeroBank hired http://research-service.com/ to write the quickstart guide?

 

Yeah, that was sad

 

I hope your explanation (or something similar) is true. Yet, XeroBank still has the responsibility for reading and authorizing the publication of the QuickStart Guide and therefore, in my opinion, bears the ultimate responsibility for an embedded link to a suspicious service. At the very least, this occurrence on a XeroBank webpage is very unprofessional.

 

In fairness, if you look at the thread closely, you’ll see that the reference to “them” is ambiguous -- it may not refer to XeroBank but to Metropipe.

 

@PooseyII

We get that you're nursing a grudge against Steve et alia. And we get that you can google and/or have loads of bookmarks.

What we don't quite get is why it matters so much to you. FWIW, I'm betting that you're either a Tor developer, or one of the LFC refugees.

Whatever