Good Article by kuketz-blog.de about this.
It’s in german, but you can use any translation tool recommended by privacyguides or just use an AI.
If you use a fully encrypted service like Signal the location of the server is still relevant, but not as relevant as if you use a trust me bro service.
VPN’s are just based on Trust. For these services laws and countries are extremely important.
My thoughts: If you use a VPN, you just acces the Internet from a different server which uses a different ISP then if you would acces the Internet directly via your home ISP. You just change the ISP with the advantage that you can defeat tracking methods which are just solely based on IP Adresses. Nowadays IP based tracking is just one of hundred methods, so a VPN doesn*t help at all if you don’t do something against all the other tracking methods.
For someone living in the US it makes sense to VPN into a server in switzerland to use a swiss ISP instead of a american one. You don’t need to be an expert so know that US ISPs are tracking and surveilling way more then swiss ISPs.
But from the perspective of a citizen in switzerland it doesn*t make sense to use a VPN if you don’t select a swiss server or a server of a country where the ISP’s are as regulated as in switzerland or even more regulated. But if you choose a VPN server in romania or whatever, then you are decreasing your privacy. Yea, you are still getting a different IP adress, but overall it doesn’t make sense.
Am I right here?
I think many people dont really understand VPNs and that you just switch the ISP which sees your traffic. Yea, your home ISP cant see the traffic, but now ProtonVPN can see the traffic and the ISP from the datacenter server in say Romania can see the traffic too. Double hop makes sense if you for example choose a server in switzerland and one in iceland if you know that these countries are one of the best ones for privacy regulation.