Best VPN for you
VPN services have become an important tool to counter the growing threat of Internet surveillance, but unfortunately not all VPNs are as anonymous as one might hope. In fact, some VPN services log users' IP-addresses and other private info for months. To find out how anonymous VPNs really are, TF asked the leading providers about their logging practices and other privacy sensitive policies.
spyBy now most Internet users are well aware of the fact that pretty much every step they take on the Internet is logged or monitored.
To prevent their IP-addresses from being visible to the rest of the Internet, millions of people have signed up to a VPN service. Using a VPN allows users to use the Internet anonymously and prevent snooping.
Unfortunately, not all VPN services are as anonymous as they claim, as several incidents have shown in the past.
By popular demand we now present the fourth iteration of our VPN services “logging” review. In addition to questions about logging practices, we also asked VPN providers about other privacy sensitive policies, so prospective users can make an informed decision.
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1. Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you to match an IP-address and a time stamp to a user of your service? If so, exactly what information do you hold and for how long?
2. Under what jurisdiction(s) does your company operate?
3. What tools are used to monitor and mitigate abuse of your service?
4. Do you use any external email providers (e.g. Google Apps) or support tools ( e.g Live support, Zendesk) that hold information provided by users?
5. In the event you receive a DMCA takedown notice or European equivalent, how are these handled?
6. What steps are taken when a valid court order requires your company to identify an active user of your service? Has this ever happened?
7. Does your company have a warrant canary or a similar solution to alert customers to gag orders?
8. Is BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic allowed on all servers? If not, why?
9. Which payment systems do you use and how are these linked to individual user accounts?
10. What is the most secure VPN connection and encryption algorithm you would recommend to your users? Do you provide tools such as “kill switches” if a connection drops and DNS leak protection?
11. Do you use your own DNS servers? (if not, which servers do you use?)
12. Do you have physical control over your VPN servers and network or are they outsourced and hosted by a third party (if so, which ones)? Where are your servers located?
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Below is the list of responses we received from various VPN providers, in their own words. In some cases we asked for further clarification. VPN providers who keep logs for longer than 7 days were excluded, and others who simply failed to respond.
Please note that several VPN companies listed here do log to some extent. We therefore divided the responses into a category of providers who keep no logs (page 1/2) and one for who keep usage and/or session logs (page 3). The order of the VPNs within each category holds no value.
We are also working on a convenient overview page as well as dedicated review pages for all providers, with the option for users to rate theirs and add a custom review. These will be added in the near future.