Comment by gruez
4 days ago
>The problem is that there may be perfectly legal gag orders (issued by a court) that force them to comply to normal police requests - and you would never even know.
Are there any VPN providers that claim they'll take the metamorphic bullet for their clients? I feel like you're setting up unrealistically high expectations where a VPN is like "we don't log or sell your data!", and you retort with "yeah but what if you get a secret court order or the government threatens your family?". I think nordvpn's response is consistent with what reasonable people's expectations are. Otherwise you can apply this logic to all sorts of interactions and find it quickly breaks down, eg. talking to a friend:
>"do promise you won't tell anyone?"
>"yes"
>"yeah but what if government subpoenas you, and grants you immunity so you can't plead the fifth?"
You apparently misunderstood the issue. I fundamentally don't expect Google and co. to offer me privacy. And certainly not by fighting subpoenas or gag orders. I would simply never use it for something that is extremely sensitive. The problem with VPN providers is that the basic reason to use their service is privacy - including from the government in case you are a journalist or a minority supporter in a dictatorship for example. All VPN providers use something along those lines to market their services. But they fundamentally can't deliver on this basic promise because of the very nature of domestic law.