I’m here saying Proton has servers in 127 countries and they are widely different, so how do you decide to which ones they are "tied" (protip: They are tied to none, getting an exit node in a country benefit users from the countries next to it, and it also opens that country's geolocked content to the world). Get a brain.

Do you use a CPU?

I hate to break it to you buddy...

It's always good to ask for a source so everyone is on the same page.

Anyone who gets upset when a source is asked for is a moron.

Then why boycott anything. Why use privacy-conscious alternatives. Everything is connected, afterall.

Thank you. I'm baffled by how complacent people are to Israel's involvement.

They don't necessarily need to oppose the genocide but just not host any servers in the area (since that means they've access to it).

They don't need to be materially linked; they are digitally linked. Israel allows it's communication and intelligence agencies complete legal access to any communications through VPNs that operate in it's area.

I don't want that surveillance.

It's not about supporting genocide that I'm concerned about over here per se (though it's obviously not a good look), it's the fact that the region is known for surveillance through any comms that enter it.

Unrelated, but yes, people against genocide literally boycott any businesses that operate in Israel, including McDonalds. BDS movement, for example.

The observable behavior is the fact that Israel allows it's communication and intelligence agencies complete legal access to access and monitor any info out of VPNs and other digital social info/comms.

That's been sourced; Israel is known for its surveillance. I'm not sure why that's so controversial.

This isn't fear-mongering, this isn't assumption.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't running a VPN to a region require you to have a server in that region?

If you open the app Israel is literally listed as a server. It's not hard to find.

Why is it BS?

I did my research, I wanted community feedback for things I may have missed.

I think mullvad has a server in Israel too

Mullvad doing something — even if it's reknown — doesn't automatically make it's actions good.

Israel conducts surveillance of any VPN communications of any that exist in the region. This is fully legal there. This is a threat to privacy. You'd need to let me know how that isn't the case, not that X or Y company also hosts a server in the region.

Re: mail, not looking for perfect, just better than Gmail, ideally FOSS.

It's not operating in a bad country that makes the vpn bad, but the fact that the country is known for its surveillance of VPNs there that makes it bad.

It's not about genocide.

It's about surveillance, which is fully legal in Israel.

There are other regions that don't conduct surveillance of all VPNs and comms. That's better.

Mullvad has Israeli servers.

Thanks for the other reccs though!

Let's be more specific.

Anything that gives money, power, or influence to Israel is never a good thing. They need to be boycotted at all levels.

Doing any business with or in Israel is being materially tied to Israel.

Unideal? Yes

Does that mean I stop trying altogether to minimize surveillance? No.

Fuck McDonald's too tbh

I’m afraid I may have not been clear enough.

There are solid reasons for operating vpn servers in Israel other than simply paying for the privilege of being allowed to let unit 8200 in to your system.

Those reasons, the privacy and restriction bypassing power the VPNs customers pay for, must be measured against the danger of releasing their customers data to the country in which the server is hosted.

At the same time, it requires a higher degree of trust than even what you would normally expect from a vpn provider.

In a situation like this where there are (someone like me might say noble) reasons for dipping one’s corporate sack into that bubbling crucible, we have to trust that the corporate sack has an industrial grade asbestos athletic protector covering it.

As I said above, there is good reason to believe that is the case. Mullvads proclaimed no logging system was so resilient that Interpol (who I need to be clear are not the clouseau esque bumblers of media, but a powerful and far reaching law enforcement agency) had to settle for calling in the major cdns to blacklist mullvads servers instead of succeeding at any of their lawful searches and attempts to log traffic across a broad and compliant jurisdiction.

The result of their pressure on the cdns was that the cdns did blacklist mullvad and mullvad, rather than comply with the search, simply discontinued the port forwarding feature that law enforcement claimed was key to the investigation.

The investigation was concerning cp trading over windows cifs (the right click share) with forwarded ports. Having seen several write ups on how it was being used, and having used forwarded ports with cifs to make a fake vpn between two office buildings, mullvad was the only real security layer in that operation.

Mullvad chose to discontinue what I truly believe was their most loved feature over letting the cops in on principle. They were put in the position of being able to make that choice because their system stood up to lawful attempts to confiscate and bug it.

It is clear to me that mullvad seems to be trustworthy and has a resilient system. If anyone can safely host a vpn server in Israel it’s them.

Because we can establish reasonable trust in one organization to do something, it’s reasonable to recognize that another might also be able to do something. There are a host of comparisons to be made between the two organizations, but the point of by replies was to establish that the simple fact of a vpn server in Israel doesn’t imply endorsement of, compliance with or a danger to the users of that service or server.

I apologize for not being clearer. Even in my relative youth and ignorance I make broad assumptions about others understanding of the recent histoy of VPNs and omit stuff I think is simply known because naturally everyone who would post on the privacy board has been keeping up with privacy and security news for the last decade.

I made another reply that explains in detail why and how mullvad can be trusted in this situation. Hopefully it’s a little less scattered, but I can clarify anything that seems wrong or weird.

The point I was trying to make about mail was that you’re better off treating it as a postcard that anyone can read than seeking a privacy respecting service. That simple change will improve your posture because you will no longer be communicating private matters in a medium that isn’t private.

Complete bullshit by a trolling OP. Israel is cancer, but OP is doing an obvious smear on Proton to try to agitate leftists. Case in point: Mullvad and most other VPNs have exit nodes in Israel.

It is a dumbfuck corporate decision that has absolutely no more bearing on your VPN's privacy than routing through the US or Australia. You are truly completely confused.

Also "its" doesn't have an apostrophe when used as a possessive, you fucking idiot.

I don't think having a server somewhere is necessarily a bad thing. If you choose to use that server it's up to you.

That's it? they've got some metal hosted in the country somewhere? I was expecting more.

Looking through the thread it seems you're very keen on the end of the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and privacy which is good but going after proton won't help on either front here.

If you want to help stop the murder look into the BDS and the organisations they're currently running boyoctts against and focus your efforts on those as those organisations are the ones propping up the Israeli state and allowing/assisting it to commit it's crimes. community action against targets that matter will have a far more meaningful effects than going after a handful of servers. To this end also look up Palestinian organisations where you live to work with. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK is good example.

And on the privacy side I feel you seem to miss the point of how VPNs work. If you avoid ever setting your exit point to Israel then Israel will never see your traffic and be able to surveil it. Unless you have some evidence that Proton's network has been compromised I can't see any technical reason to avoid using Proton or any other provider running endpoints in Israel.

You can at least try to minimize the information that they squeeze out of you. It's either that you can give least amount of information such as just device you use, or whether you use Google or not, etc. or you could let them know every single detail in your life, everything you do, everywhere you go, even everything you think. That's what this community is about. It's not about being an alien to the world but minimizing the invasion of our privacy as much as is possible.

And many people do actually boycott everything, they quit all electronic devices and live the old school way, away from highly urbanized or metropolitan areas. If that's what you want, be a hermit like them.

Yeah that is what I meant, I'm guessing you meant to reply to the other guy, not me?

The focus on this post was primarily the surveillance and lack of privacy Israel is known for, though genocide is obviously not a good look either. Relating themselves to Israel in anyway does lower the company's reputation and the trust it inspires.

I am admittedly not tech-savvy so I'm not really able to understand the fine print myself, though if they conducted their operations within israel that'd definitely be alarming from a surveillance pov. I'm not sure it would register as merely "some metal" to me, if that were the case.

However I know they're in Switzerland and I don't have any idea how "exit Nodes" and the sort function.

Just because mullvad and most other VPNs do something, doesn't mean it's good.

Israel is known for a level of surveillance that most other countries aren't.

The rest of what you've said is just ad hominem I'm not interested in.

I've only recently started looking into privacy so much of it goes over my head.

I don't use mails for communication, but I'd just like to limit the amount of information/tracking that corporate overlords can collect of me if I can help it (subscriptions mostly and the demographic information they imply, I suppose).

To summarize, are you saying your trust in Mullvad's ability to safely host in Israel comes from its decision to relinquish prized features to resist interpol searches?

Proton is garbage though. They immediately disabled my account after I set it up, as I'm on some blacklist by some brazillian firm, they didn't tell me that part, they said suspicious activity. I do nothing illegal, or spammy either, I read the news and use some social media.

Anyway they gave me no way to appeal. The other main one that doesn't require a phone number or existing email let me appeal and approved it.

Now why am I on some shady blacklist that tech companies use to discriminate against people for? I can only speculate, but I suspect it's an Israel thing.

I wouldn't assume they aren't able to grab it all. Both the US and all 5 eye countries, and Israel, should be avoided if possible, to have nothing passing through their servers. Not that other countries won't also grab it as they can, but Israel by extension of the US has things compromised on a base level.

That’s definitely not what I meant to write. In the words of our number one drone striker, uhh, let me be clear:

It’s much easier to believe that the Interpol was unable to successfully monitor or infiltrate mullvads servers even with warrants in multiple nations and instead took the alternate route of applying pressure to cdns and ISPs to blacklist the service as opposed to any other understanding because it’s much harder to convince everyone who handles packets globally to stop communicating with a set of IPs than it is to execute a search warrant that you have legal authorization and the specialized training and personnel for.

My interpretation of the reason that mullvad discontinuing port forwarding was acceptable to Interpol was that it would drive the people under investigation to either conduct their business under more compliant services or out in the open.

To directly address your concerns for your own choice of vpn:

If you’re worried about having your own data turned over to Israel, you can’t just rely on the physical location of servers to prevent that. The service you use needs to be trustworthy on its own because many nations comply with Israeli intelligence as a matter of course or as a matter of law. You may be well served by layering security instead of relying on just one service or connection in that case.

If your concern is not paying for a service that will eventually send that money to Israeli businesses or even to the government of that nation directly, that’s a toughie. Either because the region contains many motivated customers or because some VPNs are intelligence cutouts, a lot of VPNs have a server in Israel. Of the ones I use, airvpn doesn’t have any Israeli servers. I havent paid much attention to news about air and do not use it for sensitive communications. I do not recommend anyone use air for sensitive communications.

In that case just using any email service that doesn’t do ad tracking is probably fine. Make sure to keep your email deleted up and save anything you need to know or might need later on down the line.

Try to pick a service that’s a big name, lots of recipients servers and clients will enforce very strict uhh dkim or whatever and that means small timers get bounced.

The concern is primarily about not letting Israel have my data; payments towards them isn't. What would you recommend in terms of layering security?
I am currently degoogling, getting rid of Meta apps, and switching from american for-profit socials to FOSS alternatives.

Well, you’re getting into don’t own a phone, use libreboot territory. So bear in mind that the path you’re sniffing around leads pretty much only there.

If you feel comfortable using tor that might make you feel safer.

Social media is a megaphone. With respect and kindness, consider not posting about this if you’re concerned about it.

The idea that you're not interested in being called out is not unusual.

You have a bone to pick with Proton. It is evident as you've singled them out without mentioning this is industry standard. You have a problem with the VPN industry that you are solely blaming Proton for in your post title.

You are a weird little agitator and deserve many more ad hominems. Get wrecked.

I responded to the aspects of your argument that weren't personal attacks.
Personal attacks, yes, I am not interested in.

''Industry standard'' doesn't mean anything. Government surveillance and everything this sub stands against is ''industry standard''. Just because everyone's doing it doesn't mean it's a good thing.

I ''singled out'' Proton because it was the VPN I used the most prior. I'm not sure why that's a problem.

Are you able to discuss things based on criticisms of logical reasoning and evidence, or are you going to continue to respond with personal attacks?
I am open to critique.

What does Privacy@lemmy exist for?

Honestly, people who are angry they’re getting targeted ads.

Seriously: if you’re worried about a state, any state, sucking up your data and identifying information, stop posting about it on public forums.