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GigaNews Outed as Secret FBI Operation

In a recent article of online information, an alleged ex-employee has outed Giganews as an FBI operation, stating the company ran sting operations, logs large amounts of user data, and outed their VPN service as a government tied logging provider.

In the most recent post found on Cryptome.org, an alleged ex-employee of the company behind Giganews, Data Foundry/Texas.net, has outed the whole company and their counterparts to be run by the FBI. In the 1200 word post, the alleged ex-employee, Nick Caputo, outlined his work at the company and how the FBI directly worked with the company to siphon data out and log large swaths of user data.

Giganews is a Usenet/newsgroup service provider. Founded in 1994, Giganews service is available to individual users through a subscription model and as an outsourced service to internet service providers. Giganews currently offers service to over 10 million broadband users in 180 countries. Giganews offers more than three years of article retention in binary groups and eight years in text groups. Giganews is owned by Data Foundry and also operates Dump Truck, VyprVPN and was formerly known as Texas.net.

The GigaNews Story from Nick Caputo

We in no way Support, Believe, or Deny any Claims.
In a story which has outraged many Giganews users, below is the story of Nick Caputo, an alleged ex-Giganews system engineer. The story outlines how he went from working for the company for years, to begin fired for removing child pornography, to then begin asked to an FBI office where he was offered his job back.

Caputo starts his story by stating how the CEO somewhat indirectly asked Caputo to remove child pornography groups found on various usenet newsgroups, which he said he was happy to clean off the network. Shortly after, the CEO was outraged for his actions and stated he was “jeopardizing criminal investigations.” A few days post deletion, the CEO rolled out a backup of the deleted newsgroups which Caputo claims he did not have access to. Months after Caputo removed the alleged child porn networks and tried to help clean “abhorrent junk” off Usenet as a whole, he was fired for interfering with the Usenet network.

After he was fired, Caputo emailed the FBI and proceeded to tell them about the child pornography usenet rings running wild. He claims the FBI had invited him down to their private office to discuss details of what was happening.

Now this is where the story takes a turn, the alleged FBI agents Caputo met and talked with were past coworkers of his and offered him a job under a different identity in same field. Many redditors think the story is false, stating if the FBI did give him his job back, would past employees not recognize him, too add, why would they give him a job in the same field again?

Caputo continues by naming off a few Usenet groups the FBI allegedly operates, along with stating one of the FBI agents he talked with helped roll out VyprVPN. He continues stating that VyprVPN continuously retains detailed logs on all their customers and has indirect ties to the Chinese government. Hence, why the service has a “proprietary algorithm” that can bypass the great Chinese firewall.

He continues to state log files kept on Giganews users are dubbed, “gigauth” on their “cruncher” servers.

Caputo ties up the article stating that it was extremely risky for him to post the alleged story as the FBI had threatened his family in the past. He then gives scans of business cards, emails, PDF documents and more FBI-based information that can be downloaded in a ZIP file on Cryptome.

GigaNews Reply

Giganews/Data Foundry has outed the story as completely false and a “disgruntled employee” posting the story. They state the man has made numerous claims about the company in the past while posting numerous anonymous pastebins alleged to be from Caputo. While GigaNews may be trying to out him as a fraud, no clear evidence this story is fake has been posted by GigaNews. GigaNews has not addressed claims of logging or other news other than stating “these allegations are 100% false.”

Giganews has done nothing other than attack Caputo’s character but has no proof or even refuted his claims. They have also not replied to any comments made throughout numerous Reddit threads and Hacker news comment sections, other than their initial post.

Also, found on Hacker News, many alleged past Texas.net employees have come out saying the CEO is nothing but great. A large number of these alleged Texas.net employees commenting are continuing to post at a fast rate, which appears a bit odd. We neither agree with nor deny any stories or claims and their validity.

While the story could be completely false, it remains unknown as there is no hard evidence from Giganews claiming it as a hoax. The Cryptome article contains pictures, ID’s, business cards, alleged emails and more. As the story may unfold, we will continue to report.

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