I wonder how many VPN providers are going to turn out to be honeypots in the long run. Every time they make it easier, I get more suspicious about the privacy really being provided. Perhaps I’m just really distrustful and cynical.
Opsec is an art, and there are no turnkey solutions to ultimate privacy and security. You gotta put in the effort yourself.
It's just a matter of reducing your surface area: I know for certain my government tracks my unencrypted DNS requests, and I have a static IP, so I'd rather turn Mullvad on if I'm feeling like opening an adult site. They might log my DNS, but it's a little harder for them to correlate my requests than if I were to use my home network. Not impossible, but since I am not at odds with the law, GCHQ is probably not spending billions tracking my every movement across networks.
If you need to send nuclear bomb plans to an enemy government, I hope you have a better plan than trusting the promises of any VPN network.
My threat model is:
ISP that has corrupted my govt to allow them to steal my data. Hide my IP from scummy sites.
My threat model is not:
Keep various TLAs from knowing everything I do online. (because good luck with that)
> Perhaps I’m just really distrustful and cynical.
That's fine, but you should have a good reason for it
If you were to looking for some trust in a VPN, you would want them to offer locations in privacy friendly countries, and highlighting them as such. That would potentially funnel more used to those servers which would be beneficial. You would also want the VPN to ensure the servers in those countries are run by companies based in that country, and not be head-quartered in some other country.
Crypto AG