Totally unrelated to the topic of this thread and data privacy.
EDIT:
About the issue you raised:
These irish people were among other protesters who blocked the main building of the University in Berlin. They commited crimes during that event. Police wanted to expel them from Germany. But the high court didnt allow it. So with this case you are actually undermining your own point. And now back to the topic of this thread.
Iām going to chime in and say that on my opinion, Proton is just making money out of peopleās desire for privacy for pure greed. Their pricing is just ridiculous and was one of the reasons I started looking elsewhere and finally ended up other products.
And Iām not saying that they sell data or anything, just that they found endless honeypot and are now stuck into it.
Sounds like pretty much any business to me.
Exactly. Itās something people tend to forget talking about privacy and those who provide it. 
I never used their products but I was always not convinced about the advertisement claiming best in class data privacy in Switzerland. It never was that way in Switzerland. They are not part of the EU and they do not follow the european General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Switzerland always had their own rules which were less restrictive than EU law.
This was the other reason for me skipping them.
Iām Austrian, so yeah, I know quite a bit about German politics/laws. Since Germany is our neighbor and a heavy player in the EU, itās always a topic here. Reddit? Hell no!
The current laws may not be that bad, but how long will this last? Are you aware of the political situation in Germany? If so, Iām sure you realize how quickly things could turn there.
With all honest respect: I work in data security and policy. In germany. I guess I know those laws. And the beforementioned Bundesverfassungsgericht still stands strong. So currently only fud as āargumentā. Any true hindsight that the very strong data privacy laws are getting worse OR any better ideas instead of germany?
OK, didnāt know youāre German.
Well, I guess there are better choices, but I would have to think about it and get info about various countries. Iām not doing this unless someone pays me for 
And you may call it FUD, but I really think things could change very quickly. Not just for Germany but also for Austria. Our political landscape isnāt that different.
I just think Germany wasnāt the best choice and if you donāt mind, I would prefer do not get any deeper on this. I donāt think this is a place for political discussions and others already asked to not go this direction.
The value of anything is what smoeone is willing to pay for it. If they are making hand over fist on it, then the value must be good enough for folks to pay for it.
Good business too. Otherwise youāre out of business.
I donāt think the OP was the one making the point, but the point where this is very intertwined with politics is very relevant point. I mean, quite literally, the ENTIRE piece is that a company is moving due to political policies. You canāt at that point continue discussing the topic without it in some fashion.
That being said, all of these companies that truly value data and want politics to have no impact on their data security - they need to find some island or place in the world completely void of a governmental entity. Or some country that truly cares nothing about privacy laws at all to set something up. I donāt know which one. Iām not a guru on all laws in all countries. . . but we need a truly lost place to do this.
I do like that waterworld floating island of servers idea - thereās infinite cooling potential of underwater servers too. . .
Edit: Here we go. I will say, Iām shocked at how affordable entire islands are compared to the cost of houses in my area of Los Angeles.
Honduras - https://www.privateislandsonline.com/central-america/honduras/half-moon-cay
That will not help. At the end of the day you need to move the company not only the servers. As long as the company is located in a country it is obliged to the law in that country regardless where the servers are. Good example is Microsoft with all their servers in Europe.
Putting all your servers on a boat in international water is not sufficient.
Not only that many if not all of the Microsoft subsidiaries in the third world are controlled by Microsoft Europe. Due to that all the Microsoft subsidiaries have to follow European rules and regulations even when they operate in non-European countries. Case in point, in 2025 there was a chatter about Microsoft stopping its services to company, majority owned by Grazprom but which was based and headquartered in Indo-Pacific. The reason because of European regulations.
Gazprom is on the US sanction list since 2022:
This has nothing to do with Europe only. This is enforced by US government.
Well by that logic (and probably thatās reality), there is no isolation/autonomy, because weāre all on Planet Earth and will always be interconnected (ie team a needs material z to provide resource K to customer B). Itās all too complicated for my brainā¦.and unfortunately thatās probably reality, external pressures will always exist. Everyone wants something.
I wasnāt referring to the OP of the topic but rather responding to the post from @anon18184812 to @milkytwix
Private VPN is not that hard to find.
I believe they are trust worthy, that doesnāt mean the are:
Expressvpn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExpressVPN
Private Internet Access: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Internet_Access
Iāve read in other articles that both of these companies run everything in RAM and reboot all their servers every day or two to clear them out.
When you contact their tech support, if necessary tech support will ave you enable logs on the client because they cannot see whats going on at their end.
Iāve used both services and they are both decent enough.
That VPN not even for free!!
NO.
It isnāt for free.
Free VPN services should be suspected.
I mean how are they making the money to keep the service going?
God knows right?
All I know is that PIA and EXVPN donāt log anything and it all runs in RAM.
ā¦but why would you trust an israeli-firm owned VPN service, with the bad record Iāve read in the previous comment?
If my sole option for a VPN provider was a paid plan with a company that used to have a āvery first CEO of Crossrider, Koby Menachemi, happened to be once a part of Unit 8200 which is an Israeli Intelligence Unit in their military and has also been dubbed as āIsraelās NSA ā. Teddy Sagi, one of the companyās investors was mentioned in the Panama Papers which were leaked in 2016ā, as it was written in the article,
I would rather go with no VPN at all, as my personal choice.
All you know is that they say so. Are they regularly audited to prove this?