I’ve jumped around between VPNs, trying to find the sweet spot between speed, privacy, no 5-eyes+ located, ease to port forward and I think Proton VPN checks all the marks here.
I just recently switched from Windscribe but I didn’t have a great experience, many website were having problems loading (SSL issues), I asked why this was happening on their subreddit and they all blamed it on me. As soon as I switched to Proton all my problems went away.
With all that said, I have a few questions:
How “safe” (I know nothing is 100% safe) is to torrent through Proton’s USA servers? I’m not asking how to bind my client and all that, I’m mostly asking in the sense of how reliable are their servers in case someone comes knocking on Proton’s door for USA server clients’ info.
Does anybody have experience Port Forwarding for Plex servers? I know Mullvad used to have a great guide on this, so I would like to know if there’s something similar here.
Any other tips/tricks you’d recommend to new Proton VPN users?
A server is just a piece of hardware. Proton (company) is outside of US jurisdiction and will follow (or fight) a Swiss court order. Whoever wants info will have to sue for it in Switzerland to get such an order.
Guys, security is inseparable from trust, whatever it is.
If you trust proton as part of your security, believe me proton will hold that trust, if proton makes a mistake many eyes will see it.
For your problem seems to have been discussed in an article published by proton on its website, anyone who insists on requesting proton user data he will only receive encrypted data.
Proton has advised users to take reasonable privacy measures.
The interesting thing about proton is that they always include users as part of the process of providing their services.
I’m not talking about Proton as a Swiss based company, I’m talking about the servers they have *in the US*, how likely is customer data to be at risk, let’s say, if those servers were to be confiscated or tampered with.
Are there any previous instances where Proton servers/datacenters *in the US* were questioned as to who’s using them?
Or in other words, what has stopped, let’s say the MPAA, to ask who’s using the US servers that belong to Proton?
Proton has a Secure Core option. Your traffic is routed first to a server in Switzerland, Iceland, or Sweden and then exits from a US based server with the US IP address. Secure Core is slower, so I’m not sure how well it would work for torrenting; Proton says all Plus servers will work for torrenting, but the servers designated for torrenting are optimized for it.
I would consider the US a high risk jurisdiction when it comes to routine government surveillance, and I would use the Secure Core option to mitigate risk with my sensitive web activity. If “someone comes knocking on Proton’s door for USA server clients’ info,” Proton would not comply with any demands unless presented with a valid Swiss court order. In my opinion, the higher risk would be that the US-based data center where the servers reside might be given a court order to provide all inbound and outbound traffic info, because that’s what I think it would take to match your inbound and outbound traffic by separating it from everyone else’s. From these links you may be better able to make a reasonable calculation as to what your risks might be: