I’ve tried one, and found it to be a hassle for day-to-day browsing.
A VPN only goes so far. It’s gonna anonymise you to the websites you visit and make you look like you’re somewhere else, which could help reduce chances of doxxing (albeit very lightly, there’s more efficient ways to know where you’re from). That’s about it.
If the government wants your data they will ask your VPN for it, and your VPN will comply because of their local laws. It doesn’t anonymise or scatter your traffic, it redirects it through the VPN. Which means they can see everything you do and can keep logs on it.
Even if they don’t keep logs, if there is an order to start keeping logs on you, they will have to comply. Unless they are in a non five-eyes nation or such… which is very difficult to find as VPNs go. Sometimes you’re actually more safe under your local laws than under the VPN (like if you use a VPN based in the USA). You can probably also defend your case better under local laws because you can get a local lawyer.
Even “anonymous” VPNs like Mullvad are not safe from this. You can pay for Mullvad by sending cash along with a randomly-generated key they provide you with, but if needed police will just find your mullvad key one way or another and tell them to start collecting on you.
Secondly VPN providers love to sell their service as something it’s not, by claiming it will protect you against hackers. This is a relatively recent claim, they didn’t claim that even 10 years ago because they can’t actually protect you. They just reroute your traffic, albeit through a secure network, but that’s about it. You can still download a virus by yourself. Personally I’ve never been hacked using my 4G connection, my wifi, or even public airport wifi. It just doesn’t happen that often.
Seizing your computer or raiding your home if you wrote it down.
Uploading spyware on your computer so that they can just connect to your mullvad account and check the key themselves.
Find out you use mullvad and intercept your correspondance until they find your payment, since the key needs to be reminded to mullvad.
Or just ask them to crack the code for them. Not entirely sure how this key works, if it’s regenerated everytime and if it’s encrypted or there’s an algorithm to it.
Just beat you until you tell them lol
They’re the police, they can do whatever they want.
They operate the same way as most modern encryption schemes. There is a private and public key on your device and on the server. You send your public key, the server sends its public key, and then they both use an algorithm, either Diffie-Hellman or Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman depending on what type of key you use, into which they input their private key and the other device’s public key. The output of the algorithm will be the same for both despite the fact that they have different inputs. Then, they will just use the output normally as a regular key.
Wireguard also has ephemeral keys that change constantly, so even if police get your keys and those of the specific server you connected to (they’d need both in order to derive the shared secret), they will not get your data (if you’re using Wireguard). Also, it uses Curve25519, which is a non-NIST elliptic curve (NIST is the US government’s standards agency. Who knows if their elliptic curves have backdoors)
A lot of those would happen after clandestinely monitoring your internet traffic. Spyware yes, but if they have spyware on your computer then they might as well monitor what you do on the computer side. I feel if one is going to use a VPN, Mullvad provides the most privacy features. If the police is spending all this time and resources to check your internet traffic, that means you fucked up somewhere else and they have you for something already. In that case, the VPN wasn’t the problem.
For example, you can say “police can come into your house anyway, why not leave the door open?” If the door is open, they can just walk in. But if it’s locked, they need a warrant. And again, if they have a warrant, that means you fucked up somewhere else.
I’ve tried one, and found it to be a hassle for day-to-day browsing.
A VPN only goes so far. It’s gonna anonymise you to the websites you visit and make you look like you’re somewhere else, which could help reduce chances of doxxing (albeit very lightly, there’s more efficient ways to know where you’re from). That’s about it.
If the government wants your data they will ask your VPN for it, and your VPN will comply because of their local laws. It doesn’t anonymise or scatter your traffic, it redirects it through the VPN. Which means they can see everything you do and can keep logs on it.
Even if they don’t keep logs, if there is an order to start keeping logs on you, they will have to comply. Unless they are in a non five-eyes nation or such… which is very difficult to find as VPNs go. Sometimes you’re actually more safe under your local laws than under the VPN (like if you use a VPN based in the USA). You can probably also defend your case better under local laws because you can get a local lawyer.
Even “anonymous” VPNs like Mullvad are not safe from this. You can pay for Mullvad by sending cash along with a randomly-generated key they provide you with, but if needed police will just find your mullvad key one way or another and tell them to start collecting on you.
Secondly VPN providers love to sell their service as something it’s not, by claiming it will protect you against hackers. This is a relatively recent claim, they didn’t claim that even 10 years ago because they can’t actually protect you. They just reroute your traffic, albeit through a secure network, but that’s about it. You can still download a virus by yourself. Personally I’ve never been hacked using my 4G connection, my wifi, or even public airport wifi. It just doesn’t happen that often.
How could they do this?
Seizing your computer or raiding your home if you wrote it down.
Uploading spyware on your computer so that they can just connect to your mullvad account and check the key themselves.
Find out you use mullvad and intercept your correspondance until they find your payment, since the key needs to be reminded to mullvad.
Or just ask them to crack the code for them. Not entirely sure how this key works, if it’s regenerated everytime and if it’s encrypted or there’s an algorithm to it.
Just beat you until you tell them lol
They’re the police, they can do whatever they want.
Mullvad uses Wireguard and OpenVPN.
They operate the same way as most modern encryption schemes. There is a private and public key on your device and on the server. You send your public key, the server sends its public key, and then they both use an algorithm, either Diffie-Hellman or Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman depending on what type of key you use, into which they input their private key and the other device’s public key. The output of the algorithm will be the same for both despite the fact that they have different inputs. Then, they will just use the output normally as a regular key.
Wireguard also has ephemeral keys that change constantly, so even if police get your keys and those of the specific server you connected to (they’d need both in order to derive the shared secret), they will not get your data (if you’re using Wireguard). Also, it uses Curve25519, which is a non-NIST elliptic curve (NIST is the US government’s standards agency. Who knows if their elliptic curves have backdoors)
A lot of those would happen after clandestinely monitoring your internet traffic. Spyware yes, but if they have spyware on your computer then they might as well monitor what you do on the computer side. I feel if one is going to use a VPN, Mullvad provides the most privacy features. If the police is spending all this time and resources to check your internet traffic, that means you fucked up somewhere else and they have you for something already. In that case, the VPN wasn’t the problem.
For example, you can say “police can come into your house anyway, why not leave the door open?” If the door is open, they can just walk in. But if it’s locked, they need a warrant. And again, if they have a warrant, that means you fucked up somewhere else.