> Still, the fact that the co-founder of a VPN company is trying to dig up dirt on other VPN companies doesn't make me trust his at all, it just seems shady.

I think it's a normal practice in every industry to try to find out who your competitors really are. Whether that information should be made public or not is a different question, but it doesn't make it inherently false. Instead of naively believing in carefully crafted rebuttals, people should try to verify the facts by themselves.