I know this has been discussed elsewhere, but in light of recent events, I’m interested in hearing everyone’s current opinions. Would a VPN provider based outside of the US (in safe countries) be better able to provide privacy and security than one based inside the US, considering the US government’s active role against internet privacy?
I know everyone is thinking that if your vpn is outside of the US then your service is somehow out of bounds. I think this may be a bit of a foolish thought. European countries are trying to seek assurances from the US that their citizen’s privacy is being upheld.
Not to throw more paranoia into the ring, but you do you really think it matters where your vpn is based out of if they want to monitor and collect your data?
Are we talking about the actual VPN Companies based in the US or connecting to a VPN Server that is located in the US?
Quite honestly I would always choose a USA provider. We do not have any laws regarding ISP data retention. EU does.
I think the fear is centered more around the possibility of a US government honeypot or a covert seizure of VPN provider’s servers by the US.
Moreso actual VPN companies, although any connection through a US server is completely relevant even if the company’s headquarters is outside the US.
I certainly can’t give any input on a honeypot theory. But I would ask, a honeypot for what? Are they planning on turning it all over to the MPAA/RIAA?
I hate to say it, but we all rely on trusting whatever the vpn provider says in regards to data retention. VPN providers here all say they keep no logs. As we all know a certain gov. agency also said they weren’t doing certain things and that turned out to be false. Using that same site can you really look at any of those countries and not say that they could also be used by a US gov. agency to set up a honeypot vpn, if they are running said service in the US. It is worth noting that, in the historical sense, the NSA deals with foreign communications and signals intelligence.
The US Justice Department seized Megauploads US based servers while the company itself was based out of Hong Kong.
I bring this all up for the sake of pondering and discussion. I really think that trusting anything to be secure, or private, or not be seized is in question these days no matter what its geographic location.
I bring this all up for the sake of pondering and discussion. I really think that trusting anything to be secure, or private, or not be seized is in question these days no matter what its geographic location.
While I don’t disagree that everything should be in question, I do think that we can make probabalistic claims as to which country may be more prone to seize a company’s servers. So far, the US has a proven track record of doing this. The US, as you say, even seized US based servers from a company based out of Hong Kong; this says to me that any US based server, regardless of the location of the the VPN company headquarters itself, is prone to US seizure. Thus any VPN access through US servers must be SOMEWHAT less secure than outside the US (even though that still should be held in question, but again there’s varying degrees of assurance). I say somewhat less secure since the US, compared with other countries, has a history of ‘unlawfully’ seizing servers and combatting privacy.