ZeroKnowledge to Discontinue Anonymity Service

VulgarBoatman writes: "ZeroKnowledge, providers of Freedom.net and Freedom privacy software, have abruptly decided to stop providing anonymous web browsing and private, encrypted, untraceable email for its customers. They give users 7 days before the system is shut down and all untraceable email addresses are disabled. They also say that your "secret" identity may not remain a secret for long." Well, note that that last link is a warning about using the service during the shutdown period, not a warning that they plan to compromise nyms in general. At least they're offering a refund. Update: 10/04 19:00 GMT by M : ZKS has a statement in the comments below.

Comments

Bad business model

[Quasar1999]

My question is, how did billing for the service work in the first place?

Umm, account #12344234 owes us $300... but we don't know who it is, or where he lives...

I think their business model didn't work... the collections department had nothing to do...

whew! when I read that, I thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

holy smokes, when i read that a zero knowledge system was discontinuing anonymity, I thought
that it meant that slashdot was going to stop
posting by AC's!

Easy, no billing

[Anonymous Coward]

No collections department, you paid in advance for a year's service. If you wanted to ensure anonymity, you could sign up online, get an account number, and write that on an money order. You could also pay by credit card - they claimed to have an internal system to remove the linkage between the payment and the account.

Surprise to the staff as well?

[Pituritus Ani]

Yesterday, I received the following message in response to questions about upcoming changes in services and offshore servers (emphasis mine):

Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 09:56:46 -0400 (EDT)
From: InfoReplies@zeroknowledge.com
To: @freedom.net
Subject: Ref: "New anonymous browsing service"

Hello,

Thank you for your interest in Freedom. Currently, we are unable to release specific details about our upcoming privacy services; I wish I could provide you with more information. :(

As for the servers, the upgrades should be completed shortly, and more servers should appear on the network. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Regards,

Freedom Support Team

Have a question? Looking for answers? Visit our Knowledge Center for up-to-date solutions to common problems.
http://www.freedom.net/support/knowledge.html

Re:Lets have a US government anonymizing service

[swordgeek]

"Stop burying your heads in the sand and telling yourselves the world isn't any different now."

I take offense to this remark. The world isn't really any different now than it was a month ago, and my saying that isn't an indication of me "burying my head in the sand." The only real difference is that some of you (mostly in the US) have pulled your heads _out_ of the sand and started to realise what's going on in the world.

As for your idea of a government run anonymizer service, there's just one problem: It won't work! It's exactly like banning secure encryption in the US now--the genie is already out of the bottle, and you can't put it back in. Criminals will always find ways around security, surveillance, and general watchfulness. By forcing bcakdoors on systems, you're only affecting (persecuting, in fact) the law-abiding citizens who will use them.

Re:Shaver

[Mike Shaver]

I think I left ZKS several months back (on good terms, etc., etc.).

I think that Hamnett's message says it all (they couldn't afford to keep operating the network, because of that traditional operating-cost-vs.-revenue balance).

I think that gov't pressure -- should any have actually existed; I don't recall much such pressure from when I was there -- had nothing to do the decision.

I think they picked a very hard market nut to crack, and chose a very high bar for the level of security and privacy they were going to provide.

I think the market didn't share their (our) enthusiasm for that level of service, perhaps unfortunately.

I think a lot of people have talked here and elsewhere about how the Freedom network could have been done better, from technology or marketing or whatever perspectives...

...but I think nobody has done a better job so far of that type of network service.

I think they've learned a _lot_ about protecting privacy and helping other people and organizations protect privacy.

I think there's a market for that knowledge, and good applications of it.

I think they're going to be OK.

I think you shouldn't really care what I think.

(I think Craig's still a dork.)

Re:Ian Goldberg, Bruce Schneier & Whitfield Di

[Ian Goldberg]

Believe me, no one is more disappointed about this than I am, but right now there simply isn't enough market buy-in on the premium services to justify the network's operating costs. :-(

As a business, we are focusing on the product that customers and partners want. Here's an official Zero-Knowledge Systems statement on the matter:

With the release of Freedom 3.0 and the discontinuation of the Freedom Network (our anonymous browsing and encrypted pseudonym service) there have been a number of questions for more details about the decision to stop offering the Freedom Network services. Hopefully this will help clarify things.

When we released Freedom 1.0 close to 2 years ago we saw a significant percentage of our users subscribe to the premium Freedom Network services. This was anticipated as our early adopters were very privacy and technology aware and had expressed strong interest in the Freedom Network offering.

As we began to increase the distribution of Freedom into the mass market with the release of Freedom 2.0 & 2.2, we saw a disproportionately high percentage of users who subscribed to the standard features (and not Freedom Network services). The initial interest in the premium (FN) services amongst our early adopters simply didn't carry over to the mainstream and as our user numbers grew, we began to realize that the market was looking for the kind of features we are now offering in Freedom 3.0.

As we began our feature triage for Freedom 3.0 (almost 9 months ago) we heard from customers and focus groups of users, as well as channel partners, and reflected on the statistics from our existing user base, and decided that there was not enough mass market demand for the premium services to justify continuing the service.

This was entirely a market related decision. The market demand for consumer Internet security and safety tools has grown considerably in the 4 years our company has been in business. Freedom 3.0 is a strong competitor to security offerings from companies such as Symantec and McAfee and we have gotten very positive market support and a warm reception from channel partners to this new version of our suite of privacy and security tools.

There has been speculation that this decision was somehow related to government pressure or was made in the wake of the tragedies of September 11. This is simply untrue. For the past 3 months we have been beta-testing this version with partners, getting certification from Microsoft for our drivers and completing our Alpha and Beta cycles with our beta users. Support for the Freedom network offering was removed from the client code base well before the recent tragedies of September 11.

Our research team is continuing work in the area of privacy enhanced network protocols, and we are open to any suggestions the research community offers on how we can leverage the work that went into the Freedom Network design and operation to advance this area of computer science. If you have suggestions or interest in this, please contact us at corporate@zeroknowledge.com.

Zero-Knowledge continues to offer our consumer protection utility Freedom 3.0 and we are very excited by the prospects for this product. We also have a division that is addressing the market need of enterprise privacy technologies that stem from managing consumer data that require strong security and policy frameworks to adhere to privacy regulations and customer preference management (Healthcare; Financial and other consumer data that is subject to new security, privacy restrictions relating to legislation like HIPAA, GLB, PIPEDA, EU privacy directive).

Our company continues to evolve and focus our efforts on market needs and customer demands and we remain very confident of our prospects in these markets.