No proof = scaremongering

Yes, Signal is not perfect, but I have no reason to believe that they are in any way compromised.

How private are our supposedly private communications, and who ultimately has the ability to access them?

That’s what open source and encryption are for

tbf, I’m not sure about older Fairphones (I have a FP5 and I needed to do that)

On Fairphone, for every OEM unlock you need a working internet connection, and for the first OEM unlock you need to get an activation code from Fairphone using your phones IMEI/serial number. So I’d say this classification is correct. I also have a Fairphone and everything worked without problems, but it is still 100% controlled by Fairphone even on already sold devices.

Not sure about older Fairphones. I have a FP5.

See https://www.fairphone.com/de/bootloader-unlocking-code-for-fairphone

Kape bought CyberGhost at some point, and Kape itself is, according to Wikipedia, a “British-Israeli company”.

https://www.kape.com/our-brands/ https://cyberinsider.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/

That they don’t mention it on their website is somewhat worrying.

I’m using Cryptostorm for around two years now for seeding and browsing. Some things to know.

• We don’t know who is behind Cryptostorm. It could be a honeypot. I personally think this is unlikely because they basically don’t advertise and their website is way too uninviting for the “casual” criminal user, but who knows.
• PGP-encrypted mail support works well and is (likely) handled by a dev with competence. (Very sure there is no specific “support” person.)
• Server and client code is open source on their GitHub, but they only have an OpenVPN client for Windows. For other systems you need to use the provided WireGuard or OpenVPN configs.
• No PII is required for signup.
• Their blog posts are very good and go into detail about their system and what they are doing.
• IP blocks are somewhat common, and you don’t have streaming servers.
• Speeds are fine (not the best, but good enough) and can vary from server to server.

Generally, I’m quite happy with them. But everyone needs to make sure they are fine with not knowing who exactly is behind the service.

and is part of Kape Technologies an israeli company… Same as PIA, ExpressVPN and some more