I am not sure that I fully back all of these assertions, but the overall point that commercial VPNs are just glorified proxies is true.
Don't use VPN services. · GitHub
@ScottMortimer
I don't believe that there isn't single provider that can be trusted, sure there are lot of providers that can't be trusted, especially free and 14 eyes based. After all we pay money to providers, why wouldn't they be legit business that they claim to be? I bet they can pay good lawyer for protection, and that lawyer would have easy job if law protects the consumers data in providers country.
@nikolal @ScottMortimer This depends on your risk profile. If you only want IP egress in another jurisdiction (e.g. to bypass censorship) most VPN would do the job.
Countries like Russia are known to harass providers helping bypass its Internet censorship. But if you don't have much business there, you can ignore them.
For piracy and more serious crime no VPN provider will risk their whole business for your $5 per month, so you need to assume they will always cooperate with law enforcement.
@kravietz
I think they are risking their whole business also by providing those logs to authorities, info about bad service spreads fast, especially in community who might be interested in VPN. I believe that in some parts of EU (not eastern europe, and not in over half of western europe) government really respects the law. I mean look at the Hong Kong, what happens when government corruption goes too far.
@ScottMortimer
@kravietz
Well, clients are just dumb
@ScottMortimer
@nikolal @kravietz @ScottMortimer
Don't just focus on one.
For streaming and/or fileshare, use one and never do anything personal on that VPN.
For hotspots/public-wifi use another.
For only browsing in public use Firefox and DoH, using a VPN makes you more interesting.
@nikolal The gist linked by @ScottMortimer gives a few examples of VPN providers who were *proven* to log traffic and give it to police, yet their client base seems unharmed.
Nobody cares about reputation in this business I'm afraid, because clients don't care.