Does it matter which country you exit from in a VPN?
Would internet services be subject to, let’s say Swiss privacy laws, if you were connected to a Swiss server from your VPN? And if they do, would it make that much of a difference that it’s worth the occasional hassle of having to change the language and region?
I don’t know, but gave always assumed, and have some anecdotal evidence, that it can effect how cookies on web sites are handled.
Some large companies can afford to check the geolocation of the source and serve different content; for example, more privacy-respecting options for EU clients, and invasive options for the US. In the early days of right-to-be-forgotten legislation, I noticed different content with better cookie handling options from Google if I exited from an EU country.
These days, I’m less sure it matters. I think the cost of maintaining code to fuck Americans but abide by the law for Europeans isn’t effective, and the same code is used everywhere. That’s certainly likely true for smaller companies.
I keep thinking I should do an empiracle test, but I kinda don’t care that much.
afaik (and I’m no lawyer nor have a legal background) companies operating/hosting physical servers somewhere are subject to local laws and regulations, so yes.
In my view that’s why a “no logging” policy followed by a third party auditing matters, but in the end the local regulations can still force companies to keep certain records to be allowed to operate there. Because of this I wouldn’t pick countries with a poor track of freedom of speech or high censorship as exit if available.
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