What do people think about Windscribe having its headquarters in Canada, where the 14 Eyes surveillance network is part of their legislation? Is that something I should be concerned about?
It’s hard to have 100% trust … so I wouldn’t worry. Otherwise, just stay off the internet.
where the 14 Eyes surveillance network is part of their legislation?
TL,DR at the bottom
If you do something that alerts the 14 eyes and makes you a target or entity of interest for those , A VPN won’t protect you in this case completely as there are numerous other methods to deanonymize a user even while windscribe is non logging.
So in short i would argue the entire " 5 eyes , 14 eyes and x eyes" thing is quite stupid for most ( 90%+ people ).
Because you dont need to be in the 14 eyes to Cooperate with other countrys and better believe me if you go for Bomb Threats / Terrorism / other highly criminal similiar things a VPN wont protect you even if its outside the 14eyes or whatever you think theres a ton of other things to “find” you.
the Most important thing regarding the VPN part in privacy is non logging and having a good Killswitch / firewall both things are here with Windscribe so i wouldnt worry about that i would be kinda alerted if the VPN is in china / North korea / or maybe ATM russia and other high risk countrys atm.
Is that something I should be concerned about?
TL;DR no , not as regular normal user which doesnt plan to be the next “based on a real story” protagonist of a hollywood movie.
The World is divided in two big political blocks, one is on the side of the USA and the other group support China-Russia, where they don´t appreciate VPNs too much, it doesn´t matter whether the VPN is in Canada, Switzerland or Panama, the VPN will always be located within a country that is friendly with the 14 eyes, move to a Swiss VPN if you like, they are still going to collaborate with the US/Canada/UK. Or move to one of the government approved VPNs in China in the other block, you only have those two choices.
You could also download an ipblocker if pirating. I use peer blocker and haven’t been sent anything yet.
One could argue that being headquartered in a democratic country with a respected legal system might be better for users. It would be less likely that an employee would be extorted or disappeared by the government in a country like Canada than say a third world country like Panama?
This isnt the vpn for whitle blowers or people who commit crime. its that vpn you get when you want to get netflix but dont want capthca. Its top tier at that. if you wanna hide from the 14 eyes get mullvad and deal with the constant captchas. problem with scummy vpns that market to criminals is they are going to fuck it up for the normal user.
FBI has entered Chat
I think he meant in the context of mass surveillance
Thanks for the answer. Some activism is seen as an attack by the government. For example, in my country, people who are very critical of the government are viewed as extreme and harmful individuals, and are included in the Police Intelligence Service threat list. For instance, if you are anti-Covid-19 or against general surveillance in society. So I was just curious overall.
its pretty useless since 1990 ips change in seconds and these lists are outdated the moment they are updated.
Still pretty much the same.
It doesn’t matter if you run any kind of modern phone or os or email service.
The vpn is just one of many privacy based tools
Something simple as an cookie , browsers I’d or the tons various fingerprinting mechanics could easily make you track able
In this case i would run Windscribe on Tails OS on a USB stick configured as safe as possible on devices you trust as much as possible.