The authorities apparently got tired of asking and just went in themselves.
Canada-based Windscribe, a VPN provider, just said that one of its European servers has been allegedly seized by Dutch authorities without a warrant. According to the company’s post on X, law enforcement said that they will return it to the service provider after they “fully analyze it.” It’s unclear why law enforcement impounded just a single rack from Windscribe’s cabinet, but the VPN provider said that it only uses RAM disk servers, meaning anyone who would look through the installed SSDs would only find a stock Ubuntu install on it, so the servers shouldn’t hold any trackable data.
Free advertising for Windscribe if their claims are true. Also a lot of people in the thread spreading fud about it without any real evidence. I know because I actually tried to search for it. They are based in Canada and as such part of the Nine Eyes group, but they have a heavy no-logs focus towards privacy. What was seized was one of their Dutch proxies running on ram drives. They could put all the effort they want into preserving power, it doesn’t mean much if all they don’t have any logs except the vaguest of statistics. It doesn’t matter how mature they are if the privacy practices are there.
Too sumarize the article:
US clickbait and ad infested news website directly quotes “trust me bro” Twitter post + describes in 2 sentences what a ramdisk is and does zero real “journalism” like maybe contacting mentioned dutch authorities or Windscribe themselfs.
Once again: Ban Tom’s Slopware. Post the original source instead.
Whatever they find is inadmissible, if there truly wasn’t a warrant.
Doesn’t mean they can’t use it for parallel construction
Does Dutch/EU law have that?
It basically means dodging legal restrictions on investigation by using illegal (or at least inadmissible) means to obtain evidence, and once the police have it, they look for legal ways to get that same information.
So everywhere “has it”, the question is whether they use it. I don’t know if there’s reason to believe that EU police forces use such methods more or less than their US counterparts.
I know what it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s an accepted practice in the EU. I don;t really know much about how their law works, which is why I asked about it.
It’s not an acceptable practice anywhere, but it happens all the time
this isn’t in US
Laws exist outside of that country.
https://repository.tilburguniversity.edu/bitstreams/97187bcf-4ad2-402c-ac05-e565346d09b6/download
EU has similar laws and Dutch law allows for striking illegally collected evidence if the infringement was severe
There’s that legal jargon that comes to mind, fishing expedition
Oh no, without a warrant. How could they. How impolite. No, our security is only intended for jurisdictions with law-abiding police.
Fun fact, but you can’t really do much if the police decide to just take your stuff, because they have guns. And likely more than you do.
Yes. They should perhaps dispose of that server when returned, or thoroughly examine all the firmware and such for changes. A hostile party has touched it.
That is why you dont use VPN. See you guys in I2P.
Got it, do not use IT services in
DenmarkNetherlands.Dutch is not Denmark. Dutch is Netherlands
“Oh you’re Danish! You should meet my friend Geert Van den Berg, he’s also from Dutchland!”
If I had a penny for every time, I’d have at least three fiddy.
Tree-fiddy.
Also, turns out Geert is from Germany and not the Netherlands.
