ZKS Shutdown

[Greg Broiles]

At 06:20 PM 10/4/2001 +0200, Nomen Nescio wrote:

>Zero-Knowledge Systems is reported to be shutting down their Freedom
>network and product.  A letter has apparently been sent to subscribers
>with the bad news.  Could someone please post a copy here?  Does it say
>anything about the reasons?  Just lack of money, or something related
>to 9/11?
>
>The web sites have not been updated and are still hyping the new version
>3.0 released just a few weeks ago.

This message appeared on coderpunks a few days ago -

>Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 09:38:15 +0100
>From: Ben Laurie <ben at algroup.co.uk>
>To: David Wagner <daw at mozart.cs.berkeley.edu>
>Cc: coderpunks at toad.com
>Subject: Re: What are the main Problems of implementing a pipe-net?
>
>David Wagner wrote:
> >
> > Are you aware of the anonymous network that ZKS (Zero Knowledge Systems)
> > has set up?  It has many of the same features as Pipenet.  It does not
> > go to quite the same extremes for anonymity in the face of extremely
> > sophisticated attackers, but they seem to have picked a pretty darn good
> > point in the tradeoff space.  Technically, ZKS seems to be pretty strong.
>
>They scrapped their affiliate program last week - so I guess that means
>bye-bye network.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Ben.
>
>--
>http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html
>
>"There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
>doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff

... and I just got a press release from ZKS this morning trumpeting the 
virtues of Freedom 3.0; sounds like maybe they're abandoning the network 
and shifting their consumer-product focus to software alone. I looked at 
their website after seeing Ben's message and was struck by how much they've 
shifted away from selling service to consumers at $49 each, and are now 
targeting businesses who are allegedly concerned about their customers' 
alleged concern about privacy. They did appear to be willing to sell the 
consumer software, but it clearly wasn't the focus of their business as 
presented by the website.


--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles at well.com
"We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids