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Comment by kfreds | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for asking.

> Why are the servers located in Sweden,

We have 762 servers spread across 38 countries. Less than 10% of our servers are located in Sweden [0].

> a country that's known for online surveillance

My cofounder and I started Mullvad as a protest against the growing mass surveillance of Sweden as well as other countries. Our intent was direct political action through entrepreneurship. Incorporating the company in Sweden was the obvious choice, since we are both Swedes. We felt that incorporating elsewhere would have been more risky, complicated, and costly.

Mullvad has excellent lawyers who continuously monitor the legal situation in Sweden. Right now there is no Swedish law that can compel Mullvad to start logging [1]. Should the situation change we have contingency plans.

[0]: https://mullvad.net/en/servers/ [1]: https://mullvad.net/en/help/swedish-legislation/

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Thank you, this was the response I was looking for!

> Our intent was direct political action through entrepreneurship.

Again, I didn't mean to question your intent – as I said my impression of your company so far has been a very good one! :)

> We have 762 servers spread across 38 countries. Less than 10% of our servers are located in Sweden [0].

My apologies, it's been a few years since I last looked at your server locations (so I didn't remember) and I was probably getting the wrong impression from the fact that your post is only mentioning server locations in Sweden.

> Right now there is no Swedish law that can compel Mullvad to start logging [1].

But at the same time all cross-border traffic in and out of Sweden (so for anyone using Mullvad outside Sweden: virtually all traffic) is being monitored and (probably) logged, isn't it?

I highly doubt your VPN traffic will pass Sweden if you're outside Sweden and signing onto a Mullvad VPN server located outside of Sweden. The server list may be fetched from Sweden I guess? I haven't looked at the apps traffic to be honest, I have huge respect for the Mullvad team.

Sorry, I should have been more precise: For everyone outside Sweden using Mullvad's Swedish servers. My point was just that the fact that "[r]ight now there is no Swedish law that can compel Mullvad to start logging" does not mean that Swedish intelligence agencies cannot collect any data about you (= the Mullvad user using their Swedish servers).

Locating all their servers in IndependiPrivastan probably wouldn't stop intelligence agencies from collecting data. The NSA, for example, does not care even a tiny bit about the privacy of non-US citizens and sets up equipment around the world to gather and analyze internet traffic.

I agree. But the NSA's resources are also vastly bigger than those of the Swedish intelligence agencies.

I have so much respect for everyone at Mullvad. You are the only VPN provider I trust! I have been a user for years now, and it has always been 5 dollars a month, which is quite generous. It is so cheap that even the poor can afford privacy. You guys have put a ton of effort into making your service as privacy respecting as possible. Not only that, the tech is on the bleeding edge (WireGuard, socks5, etc.) built right in. As a cybersecurity researcher, I could not be happier with the product. I hope you stay true to your mission, thanks again!

Also, will Monero ever become a supported payment method?

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