So I was wondering what is ProtonVPN’s stance on the servers in Hong Kong considering the state of affairs in the city. Can’t the government now literally force a VPN Upstream provider to simply tap all the requests that go through the VPN server in HK and also can’t they simply be tracking all the traffic that goes through the ProtonVPN servers in HK. As such, in the coming days and months, will these servers still be continued and what all measures can be taken by ProtonVPN to prevent state actors from seeing the traffic or interfering in it when say there is a court order or other such legal measures taken by the government of a country.
This article summarizes ProtonVPN’s stance pretty well. Basically their policy is to leave countries if their privacy/security would be compromised, but they will try to challenge legal measures first before leaving.
Keep in mind that even if these servers were compromised, the governments could only see where you’re connecting to, not what you’re doing on the site, thanks to HTTPS.
And this is why ProtonVPN offers their secure core servers, which bounces your traffic through servers that they actually own in Switzerland, Iceland, or one other country before exiting a VPN server in the country of your choice (not all countries are supported for the exit node)
Isn’t the same thing as Russia but eh I like me a Russian ip here and there
Ah! Thanks for the link to the article.
Challenge legal measures…lol
It’s China…HK has the “national security” law which allows them to do whatever they want.
If your VPN doesn’t have Chinese servers (it really shouldn’t) don’t use HK servers.
They also said they can’t guarantee security of servers located in other countries, and this is what the Secure Core is for.
My experience is the secure core speed for HK is <8 Mbps. From a usability standpoint, I don’t see it as being as attractive offer, or able to use on a regular basis.
Leme Adjusts my tinfoil hat
I think you meant NSA not cia
I can only travel 19 miles to my country field clandestine meeting place
In addition to what the community has already shared, this article may also be helpful: https://protonvpn.com/blog/vpn-servers-high-risk-countries/
You should individually test each server listed in the config files. I found huge differences in speed - some servers can hit 120 Mbps (as fast as my internet connection, so it could be faster), while others were only capable of 5 Mbps.
If you just use their profile as is it either picks the first one in the list or some random one - I’m not sure which
Before Internet, the CIA attached a facility onto ATT incoming phone cables In NYC, with the help of ATT. This goes back to 60’70’80’s. Now we have the NSA plus CIA, https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-york-hidden-in-plain-sight/ https://money.cnn.com/2013/11/07/technology/att-cia-phone-records/index.html https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston there are no secure lines.
Even then I would whisper or pass notes written on rice paper that are eaten after use! 
I have tested many of them, but not systematically. My connection is Gigabit. I may try it but that’s a lot of work for some consistency I feel like the company should offer…surely not a difference of 100-200 Mbps.
question — Does the speed also depends on the load? So while I may have found a Secure Core route that’s (let’s say e.g.) 30 Mbps at 12pm, if by 8pm the load on the server increases wouldn’t that just defeat the purpose of finding the individual specific server that works?
u/ProtonVPN what are your thoughts on this? Can they undo your encryption?
The notes need to be encrypted. The satellites are watching us!
In my experience the servers that had good speeds when I tested them continue to have good speeds
This article explores the threats that VPNs can and can’t guard you against, and may be helpful reading: https://protonvpn.com/blog/threat-model/