Sometime in the past couple days my VPN stopped working (on Android). I noticed it was because the servers for my first hop (in Switzerland) were down. When possible, I try to stick with multihop on Mullvad-owned DAITA servers. The best option for my first hop was Switzerland, and then I use whatever exit server best suits my purpose.
I’ve been checking to see if the Switzerland servers came back online, and I just realized they have now completely removed the Mullvad-owned DAITA servers in Switzerland. Has anyone seen any news about this or about why it happened? It’s a bummer because the rest of the available locations are a downgrade in regards to privacy laws. Only USA, Estonia, Sweden, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, and UK remain. It seems suspicious that they removed their most secure servers in one of the countries with the best privacy laws, so I’m hoping there’s a reason or explanation for it.
Out of the remaining countries, which would be the next best options?
Fewer options suck but I believe Mullvad’s entire network would still be subject to Swedish laws regardless of where they base their servers in. I don’t see how connecting to their Swiss server provides any extra protection from Swedish or EU law. If anything, servers outside of Sweden (or at least the data centers and ISPs they rely on) may be subject to both Swedish law as well as their host country’s law which could make them riskier to use than Mullvad’s Swedish servers. It’s also worth mentioning that Switzerland is no longer a reliable privacy safe haven.
I’d bet the fewer jurisdictions you involve the better, so I’d say Sweden.
I was moreso worried about passive or dragnet monitoring rather than a targeted legal situation. For passive monitoring, isn’t it beneficial to have a location outside the 14 Eyes nations?
They are definitely still not appearing in the Android Mullvad VPN app on my phone.
That is not for your first hop. All of the Mullvad-owned Switzerland servers are no longer available to use as a first hop. I don’t really see any legitimate reason they would have changed this.
The ch001, ch002 and ch003 server are available and Mullvad own it. You does not see it first hop because those servers do not support DAITA. You can disable DAITA or switch to other countries for first hop such as Sweden ( all owner servers).
You are missing the point. A week ago, there were several servers that were Mullvad-owned AND DAITA AND available as a first hop. Mullvad removed servers. The post is asking if anyone knows why. I know that I can make changes to sacrifice my own privacy. That isn’t what’s I asked about though.
The “14 eyes” were based on secret agreements that only became publicly known through the Snowden leaks. There are other intelligence partners not included in the “14 eyes” such as NATO, Japan, South Korea, Israel, etc. There are probably many more partners beyond “14 eyes” nations we don’t know about. The NSA alone is likely a global passive adversary (or at least close to one) and we haven’t even begun considering other potential intelligence alliances beyond the typical U.S.-led block.
So in theory, it’s possible connecting to countries not included in intelligence alliances could help. But in practice we don’t know which countries are not sharing intelligence nor do we know how well the NSA is spying on non-allied countries. But we do know they have an endless budget and countless political connections around the world, so it’s safe to assume that most or possibly all countries may be caught up in NSA or NSA-allied surveillance to some extent.