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Re:Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices by vmception on Saturday November 28, 2020 @06:39PM (#25241554)
Email and VPN is the most obvious even without this “proof”

Will otherwise intelligent people want to fight tooth and nail if I mentioned any specific VPN provider being incapable having privacy assurances you can rely on? Of course so lets do it anyway

Protonmail

NordVPN

ExpressVPN

every one

It doesnt matter what you want to believe, the entire concept doesnt do what people think it does.

You would simply have no way of knowing if a VPN suddenly did start keeping logs.

Re:Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices by gruez on Saturday November 28, 2020 @07:21PM (#25241798)
>Will otherwise intelligent people want to fight tooth and nail if I mentioned any specific VPN provider being incapable having privacy assurances you can rely on?

I agree if your threat model requires that nobody eavesdrop/log your traffic, then a commercial VPN service probably isn't the right tool, and you should probably use tor instead. That said, it doesn't mean commercial VPNs are placebo/snakeoil. They still provide:

* anonymity from the websites you visit: your home internet connection's IP typically uniquely identifies you/your household (assuming no CGNAT). Meanwhile, a VPN server might be used by tens of hundreds of people, which greatly increases your anonymity set. It's further improved if you rotate VPN servers, because a VPN service might be used by millions of people.

* extra degree of separation: your ISP knows a lot of info about you (name, address, payment info, maybe even credit score), whereas a VPN service might only know your email and the ip you connect from. If your VPN service decides to go rogue and sell your browsing habits, they'll have a much harder time associating it with your real life identity.

Re:Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices by vmception on Saturday November 28, 2020 @07:25PM (#25241818)
correct and those are valid use cases

anything that requires a government not knowing is outside of the use case

Re:Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices by ampdepolymerase on Saturday November 28, 2020 @08:04PM (#25242034)
Don't forget HN's favorite, Mullvad. Hey if Mozilla trusts them, it must totally mean they are not compromised by the government right?
Re:Second Swiss firm allegedly sold encrypted spying devices by speedgoose on Sunday November 29, 2020 @12:48AM (#25243206)
I trust Mozilla as much as my mom to keep secrets.