https://torrentfreak.com/italy-approves-piracy-shield-vpn-dns-proposal-risk-of-prison-for-isps-intact-241001/

As title. Italy is decided to pass a law that basically creates a chinese-type firewall in the country. The question is simple: even if I’m not doing anything illegal, my VPN provider will have to know what am I doing to report it in case it’s illegal, or face jail.

So how could my traffic remain private in this scenario?

Can a VPN provider with no logs policy be held accountable of anything? Can it actually know what I’m doing?

  • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    2 months ago

    Yes, any VPN provider will see what’s in your traffic, no way around that…ever…no matter who you choose

    however not all VPN providers will keep a record of your traffic, so it may only exists briefly in their servers as it passes through and then it’s gone. This is how companies like mullvad operate. Even if the cops come with a warrant, there will be no evidence because nothing is saved.

    • ShortN0te@lemmy.ml
      0·
      2 months ago

      Yes, any VPN provider will see what’s in your traffic, no way around that…ever…no matter who you choose

      Yes, there is a way around it, just use https.

      • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        0·
        2 months ago

        Doesn’t that just hide the specific content? They still know where the content is coming from?

        And not everything done online, especially things that can get you in trouble with authorities (like torrenting copyrighted material) can be done through https.

        • ShortN0te@lemmy.ml
          0·
          2 months ago

          Basically everything online can be done encrypted. bittorrent has had support for encryption for years. There are other challenges like hiding from DPI and the thing that you broadcast your torrent IP but the content can be securely emcrypted.

    • corroded@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      Aren’t there a few VPN providers that don’t even install writable storage in their servers? I can’t remember which, but I’m sure there’s at least one that boots their machines off of read-only media and only installation hard drives in the servers used for storing login credentials.

        • Random Dent@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Yeah it’s been kind of legally proven that Mullvad keeps no logs too, they were raided by police last year and they came away with nothing.

          From the article:

          However, Swedish police left empty-handed. It looks like Mullvad’s own lawyers stepped in and pointed out that the company maintains a strict no-logging policy on customer data. This means the VPN service will abstain from collecting a subscriber’s IP address, web traffic, and connection timestamps, in an effort to protect user privacy. (It’s also why Mullvad VPN is among our most highly ranked VPN services.)

          “We argued they had no reason to expect to find what they were looking for and any seizures would therefore be illegal under Swedish law,” Mullvad said. “After demonstrating that this is indeed how our service works and them consulting the prosecutor they left without taking anything and without any customer information.”