You can answer the question yourself for any provider using this simple test: Can you legally buy access to it from inside the EU? If yes, they will suffer from the same problem as all other providers.
As I said above, a simple court order can destroy any attempt at privacy. All (serious) VPN providers claim they don't store logs. But that does not mean that a court can't force them to do so. When combined with a gag order you can have someone collecting all your traffic without you even realizing it. And that's just the VPN provider, which usually doesn't own any datacenters. The datacenter providers can also receive the orders to either monitor traffic or even install hardware to do so. If you want any hope of privacy, you steer clear of all big commercial "privacy" providers, because they are very high on every government agency's list. And you just need one component in the entire chain to be compromised.
> All (serious) VPN providers claim they don't store logs. But that does not mean that a court can't force them to do so. When combined with a gag order you can have someone collecting all your traffic without you even realizing it. And that's just the VPN provider, which usually doesn't own any datacenters. The datacenter providers can also receive the orders to either monitor traffic or even install hardware to do so. If
None of this really matters unless you are doing something illegal enough that the government is interested in you and convinced a judge to get warrants.
That isn't 99% of people. 99% of people just want to try and stop being traced and their data being harvested with an easy solution that mostly works for that purpose.
>None of this really matters unless you are doing something illegal enough that the government is interested in you
The issue here is that how "illegal" something is depends heavily on where you live. In some places speaking against the government can get you killed [1]. In others, hosting movies can get your house raided by police helicopters [2].
> The issue here is that how "illegal" something is depends heavily on where you live.
The context of the discussion was the EU.
And the point stands. For 99% of people VPNs offer privacy even against the government, that would need to meet a high burden of proof and require a warrant to break that privacy.
I said nothing that goes against the context. Again: When you are actually scared of getting cought for something, a commercial VPN very likely doesn't help. That goes for all jurisdictions.
You mentioned the EU as a whole but the point is it isn't and is indeed widely varied when it comes to the sorts of laws you are relying on to make your argument.
>When combined with a gag order you can have someone collecting all your traffic without you even realizing it.
Are such gag orders common in the EU? I know they are fairly common in the US, but don't know enough about EU laws to know if that's an actual concern there or not.
You're spreading FUD, the Swedish government can't do shit to Mullvad but take their servers offline. Possibly if it was a matter of national security, at which point our recommendations are useless either way.
False. Like all member states, the Swedish government has officialy ceded jurisdiction and enforcement of certain laws to the EU. Only VPN providers who do not comply with such international court orders get shut down. Look at what happened to vpnlab: The police literally write on their seized domain that they have forcefully attained access to everything, because the provider would not give it away freely: https://vpnlab.net/
Consequently, you can assume that all other VPN providers who are still doing business in Europe are freely giving away their data to government agencies.
You presume that a) all governments are bad, b) law is controlled by these governments and c) we only have to hide from governments.
Neither are absolutely true.
I mostly trust my (western european) government to not fuck me over when I am abiding the laws. Which I mightn't always do. I mostly trust them to be proportional: e.g. not beat me up or throw me in prison for smoking a spliff or drinking in public.
A court order is handled by courts. Which, at least in most European countries, is independent. This is shifting in some countries, but that's a rather big deal. "Cut of from EU benefits" big.
Regardless what police or governments want, they have to abide by laws. And courts decisions on allowing access to my internet usage.
While in many countries governments are truly life threatening to minorities, that's not the only privacy concern. I have much more to "fear" from my ISP selling out, my datacenter getting bought by a FAANG or just those FAANGs spying on my every move.
What I'm trying to say is: you are spreading FUD by inventing some absolutisms that are really a spectrum for most common VPN users.
Also: VPNs have always known to be detrimental to your security when browsing "really" secure: through TOR.
>Regardless what police or governments want, they have to abide by laws
I can't tell if this person actually believes what they wrote, or if it is some kind of attempted public social pressure technique meant to adjust the Overton Window from a rational place.
Be it 2024 or 1624, to assert that one trusts the gov to "not fuck them over" takes a special type of naivete. It certainly takes a general obliviousness to the news cycle, willful or otherwise. As well as an obliviousness to the logic of self-interest, bureaucratic expediency, State survival, profit motivation, corruption, party politics, and more. It takes an obliviousness to history.
I doubt that few people in law enforcement, public bureaucracies, or even in most elected offices would agree with the statement under discussion. In fact, the most best (or most just) system seems to be mostly built on fail-safes against being fucked over in this manner, even if all systems arguably eventually fall to corruption. Which underscores such government motivation.
If your take is that "in many countries governments are truly life threatening to minorities", then the rest of the Profession of Trust makes no logical sense for the population generally: if the bar is the threat to life. And while that is a sensible ceiling for a "do not trust" conclusion, I would argue that the bar doesn't need to be that high.
Do note that this applies to Western Europe (more precisely: the Netherlands). And do note that "to be f#ed over" is rather broad and personal. While one person might feel they are truly "f#d" by police" when they get a ticket driving their bike without lights at night, that's obviously not what I mean.
I am by conviction an Anarchist (though certainly not libertarian), and I do see the times and places where government did absolutely f# over minorities here¹. But: hear me out: those are cases where the government, through democratic mandate, made (extremely) bad laws. And then had to abide by their own laws. Sometimes forced by the -independent- courts². Democracy works: "we, the people, voted for incompetent and blasé governors, racists even, who then turned out to be imcompetent and blasé. And in doing so f*d minorities". It's not the government, really, but the will of the people!
Do I trust the police force (the institude)? Not really. But I don't need to, because it is kept in check by a functioning democratic system and courts. Again, this is not the US. Nor Somalia or South Africa. Do I trust a police officer (a human)? Quite probably; in the Netherlands a majority isn't power-tripping nazi scum but rather people with a (imo weird) calling to help.
Yes, because those cases are fortunately rather few. And usually (far!) fewer than in places with less democracy. So it seems plausible that they were caused by not enough (or otherwise "bad") democracy, not too much of it.
I absolutely think they were caused by too much democracy. Most people are not equipped and may never be so to vote or have a say on the most important issues. They need to be managed by those that are capable.
> I absolutely think they were caused by too much democracy. Most people are not equipped and may never be so to vote or have a say on the most important issues. They need to be managed by those that are capable.
Said all fascists and communists everywhere ever.
Oh, and probably all the Ayn-Randian libertariards too.
