New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
Some countries might give you a court order to not talk and start logging, other countries don't give a flying fuck about other countries legal requests. Something like that I think.
I'll say it this way: If the VPN provider operates in five-eyes countries, usually, it is most likely not going to be beneficial for you if a court order arrives. If the VPN company operates from a country outside five-eyes there is a chance you COULD benefit from this. Then again, while Sweden is 9-eyes, OVPN has been proven to defend their clients in court (iirc). Totally depends on the company and the individual case.
1, marketing.
2, peace of mind for the customers, see 1
3, yes, it matters. It's a long discussion, but suffice it to say that some jurisdictions can enforce a gag order, for example, and you'd never know what they are doing to your data, and the VPN provider can't say a word about it.
In this case, I guess I should be looking at the provider's warrant canary for indications that they were served a court order?
Imagine a VPN company incorporated in China or Russia! Now imagine the safety of your data(technically logs, but hey they says a lot)!
Hm.. That's so complicated with different VPN providers. Multiple ToS & AUP that needs to be read through and then comparing them etc..
I don't know what you are doing on the VPN, but for me.
I choose to buy a VPS that says they ignore complaints and install a VPN on it.
Problem is that you won't get multiple locations like most VPN providers have.
Registering 'off shore' and in obscure places known for tax freedom doesn't automatically make a VPN service 'good'. Registering in a modern 1st world country doesn't automatically make a VPN service 'bad'.
The whole 5/9/14 eyes things conveniently leaves out the fact that the traffic between you and some obscure warehouse housing a server in a recovering comblock country gets backhauled and routed through a 5/9/14 eyes nation almost always, anyway.
Like I mentioned, it's a long discussion, and I normally like to go on and on about stuff like this, especially because it's so important -- and we live in a world where privacy is decreasing by the day. But I'll try to keep it short.
Basically, the bottom line is you have to actually start with a threat assessment. People are way too lazy to really think about it, and they run for the obvious things like a VPN. But that's what you have to do... a threat assessment. That's also too long of a topic.
And yes, a threat assessment is something everyone should do, even your grandma. Just don't call it that around her, she might get overly worried. But she's being targeted right now by people who want to steal her retirement, and she needs to understand some basics about this too, yes, even if she's 80 years old.
In short, first educate yourself about the kinds of common threats out there, especially the ones that are relevant to your online activities, how data generated by you is easily tracked and attached to a profile about you, and how that data is aggregated and abused, and then used against you.
Then give yourself an honest look in the mirror and ask yourself what kinds of behaviors you have that are leaving your footprints everywhere? And then, who do you want to hide those footprints from? And why?
Then you can ask yourself what you really need.
So lots of questions. Lots of thinking. You can do a short version for grandma too.
The problem is, most people are asking the wrong questions in the wrong order, have an unrealistic set of expectations of what they'll get from so-and-so service, and then they try to solve the wrong problems first, and end up with a false sense of security.
But yes, having said all that, taking into account the policies, jurisdictions, history of transparency, open vs closed-source, canaries, etc., of a provider are all good things to look at. But spend time learning about the larger issues too and why you think you need a certain kind of protection.
Good luck!