I’m an American doing all the doom-scrolling and people talking about “prepping” or what we can do to protect ourselves from trump’s actions, as far as that is possible. One of the things some suggest is getting a VPN. But does that really help protect you from the government knowing/finding out that you posted, “Trump is an idiot” or whatever? Couldn’t the government, especially under trump, just subpoena the VPN company with keyword searches for “Trump sucks”?
Most of the VPN companies are not based in the US for exactly that reason.
To answer this question, it is important to know what a VPN does. It encrypts the traffic between your device and the VPN’s end point. That is all.
It is hiding traffic from your ISP and any other intermediate carrier. So, for example, Xfinity doesn’t know you’re browsing the Dope. They only know you have a connection to an IP address in some data center.
At the final destination, the Dope doesn’t know you’re real IP address, they just see that you’re coming from the VPN’s exit point. So instead of the Dope knowing you’re connecting from a residential Xfinity address in Philadelphia (or wherever), they only know you’re connecting from an address in some data center in Europe.
However, the Dope sees you’re logged in as @Skypist, and when the stormtroopers march into Dope world headquarters and demand the user logs, they’ll see whatever email address you registered with, and any recent places you’ve logged in from (going as far back as the server keeps records).
So if you just want to use a VPN to visit all of your normal places, all you’re really doing is keeping Xfinity, AT&T, Spectrum, etc. from knowing about it. That can be a legitimate reason to use a VPN.
A VPN might be an important piece of hiding your activity from the government, but it is only going to be one piece, not a cure all.
Even if it did: why would they only search back to now? If you’ve already said “Trump is an idiot” – it’s probably too late now.
And the fewer people who are willing to say that in public – the more likely it is that the government will actually come after critics.
Finally. Somebody explains it correctly.