BY ERNESTO ON MARCH 4, 2017 C: 184
VPN services have become an important tool to counter the growing threat of Internet surveillance. Encrypting one's traffic through a VPN connection helps to keep online communications private, but is your VPN truly anonymous? We take a look at the logging policies of dozens of top VPN providers.
Millions of Internet users around the world use a VPN to protect their privacy online.
Unfortunately, however, not all VPN services are as private as you might think. In fact, some are known to keep extensive logs that can easily identify specific users on their network.
This is the main reason why we have launched a yearly VPN review, asking providers about their respective logging policies as well as other security and privacy aspects. This year’s questions are as follows:
1. Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you to match an IP-address and a time stamp to a user/users of your service? If so, what information do you hold and for how long?
2. What is the registered name of the company and under what jurisdiction(s) does it operate?
3. Do you use any external visitor tracking, email providers or support tools that hold information about your users/visitors?
4. In the event you receive a takedown notice (DMCA or other), how are these handled?
5. What steps are taken when a valid court order or subpoena requires your company to identify an active user of your service? Has this ever happened?
6. Is BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic allowed (and treated equally to other traffic) on all servers? If not, why?
7. Which payment systems do you use and how are these linked to individual user accounts?
8. What is the most secure VPN connection and encryption algorithm you would recommend to your users?
9. How do you currently handle IPv6 connections and potential IPv6 leaks? Do you provide DNS leak protection and tools such as “kill switches” if a connection drops?
10. Do you offer a custom VPN application to your users? If so, for which platforms?
11. Do you have physical control over your VPN servers and network or are they hosted by/accessible to a third party? Do you use your own DNS servers?
12. What countries are your servers located in?
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Below is the list of responses from the VPN services in their own words. Providers who didn’t answer our questions directly or failed by logging extensively were excluded. We specifically chose to leave room for detailed answers where needed. The order of the list holds no value.
PRIVATE INTERNET ACCESS
VPN review1. We do not store any logs relating to traffic, session, DNS or metadata. There are no logs for any person or entity to match an IP address and a timestamp to a user of our service. In other words, we do not log, period. Privacy is our policy.
2. Private Internet Access is operated by London Trust Media, Inc., with branches in the US and Iceland, which are a few of the countries that still respect privacy and do not have a mandatory data retention policy. Additionally, since we operate from the countries with the strongest of consumer protection laws, our beloved customers are able to purchase with confidence.
3. All of our VPN systems and tools are proprietary and maintained in house. We utilize some third-party tools in order to provide a better customer experience. By Q3 2017, all of these third party tools will be transitioned to in-house solutions.
4. We do not monitor our users, and we keep no logs, period. That said, we have an active, proprietary system in place to help mitigate abuse.
5. Every subpoena is scrutinized to the highest extent for compliance with both the “spirit” and “letter of the law.” While we have not received valid court orders, we periodically receive subpoenas from law enforcement agencies that we scrutinize for compliance and respond accordingly. This is all driven based upon our commitment to privacy. All this being said, we do not log and do not have any data on our customers other than their signup e-mail and account username.
6. BitTorrent and file-sharing traffic are allowed and treated equally to all other traffic (although it’s routed through a second VPN in some cases). We do not censor our traffic, period.
7. We utilize a variety of payment systems, including, but not limited to: PayPal, Credit Card (with Stripe), Amazon, Google, Bitcoin, CashU, and any major store-bought gift card and OKPay. Payment data is not linked nor linkable to user activity.
8. Currently, the most secure and practical encryption algorithm that we recommend to our users would be our cipher suite of AES-256 + RSA4096 + SHA256.
9. Yes, our users gain a plethora of additional protections, including but not limited to:
(a) Kill Switch: Ensures that traffic is routed through the VPN such that if the VPN connection is unexpectedly terminated, the traffic will not route.
(b) IPv6 Leak Protection: Protects clients from websites which may include IPv6 embeds, which could lead to IPv6 IP information coming out.
(c) DNS Leak Protection: This is built-in and ensures that DNS requests are made through the VPN on a safe, private, no-log DNS daemon.
(d) Shared IP System: We mix clients’ traffic with many other clients’ traffic through the use of an anonymous shared-IP system ensuring that our users blend in with the crowd.
(e) MACE™: Protects users from malware, trackers, and ads
10. We have custom applications to which our users have left amazing reviews. PIA has clients for the following platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, iOS and a Chrome Extension (Coming soon). Additionally, users of other operating systems can connect with other protocols including OpenVPN, SOCKS5 (unencrypted), and IPSec, among others.
11. We utilize our own bare metal servers in third-party datacenters that are operated by trusted friends and, now, business partners whom we have met and on which we have completed serious due diligence. Our servers are located in facilities including 100TB, Choopa, Leaseweb, among others.
We also operate our own DNS servers on our high throughput network. These servers are private and do not log.
12. As of the beginning of 2017, We operate 3283 servers across 37 locations in 25 countries. For more information on what countries are available, please visit our network information page.
Private Internet Access website
NORDVPN
nordv1. As stated in our terms of service, we do not monitor, record or store any VPN user logs. We do not store connection time stamps, used bandwidth, traffic logs, or IP addresses.
2. The registered company name is Tefincom co S.A., and it operates under the jurisdiction of Panama.
3. We use Google Analytics and a third-party ticket/live chat tools (Zendesk/Zopim). Google Analytics is used to improve our website and provide our users with the most relevant information. The ticket/live chat tool is used to provide the best support in the industry (available 24/7), but not tracking our users by any means.
4. We operate under Panama’s jurisdiction, where DMCA and similar orders have no legal bearing. Therefore, they do not apply to us.
5. If the order or subpoena is issued by a Panamanian court, we would have to provide the information if we had any. However, our zero-log policy means that we don’t have any information about our users’ online activity. So far, we haven’t had any such cases.
6. Yes, we allow P2P traffic. We have optimized a number of our servers specifically for file-sharing; ensuring other servers, which are meant for streaming and other purposes, have uninterrupted speeds. In any case, we do not engage in bandwidth throttling for P2P users.
7. Our customers can pay via credit card, PayPal and Bitcoin. We do store the standard billing information for refund purposes, but it can not be related to any Internet activity of a particular customer. Bitcoin is the most anonymous option, as we do not link the payment details with the user identity or other personal information.
8. NordVPN uses NGE (Next Generation Encryption) in IKEv2/IPsec. The ciphers used to generate Phase1 keys are AES-256-GCM for encryption, coupled with SHA2-384 to ensure integrity, combined with PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy) using 3072-bit Diffie Hellmann keys. IKEv2 protocol is used by default in our OS X and iOS apps, and it can be manually setup on Windows and Android OS. We are also exploring possibilities to develop IKEv2 based apps for Android and Windows. At the moment, Windows and Android apps are using AES-256-CBC encryption with 2048-bit key.
9. Yes, we do provide both an automatic app-level kill switch and a feature for DNS leak protection. Our OS X, Windows, iOS and Android apps have IPv6 leak protection implemented. NordVPN service will not leak IPv6 address.
10. We have custom VPN applications for Windows, MacOS, Android, and iOS. All NordVPN apps are very easy to install and use, even with no previous experience with VPN services.
11. We use a hybrid model, whereby we control some of our servers but also partner with premium data centers with strong security practices. Furthermore, due to our special server configuration, no one can retain or collect any data. All servers have been set up with a zero logs policy. We do have specific requirements for network providers to ensure highest service quality for our customers. We do have our own DNS servers, and all DNS requests go through those.
12. At the moment, we have 741 servers in 58 countries. You can find the full list here.
NordVPN user reviews
EXPRESSVPN
expressvpnlogo1. ExpressVPN is an anonymous, offshore, zero-log VPN service provider. We are in the business of keeping our customers private and secure.
We do not possess information that would enable us to identify a user by an IP and timestamp produced as part of an investigation. ExpressVPN IPs are shared among customers, and we don’t have the ability to match a customer to an IP address. We designed our network to maximize privacy protection for our customers.
2. Express VPN International Ltd. is a BVI (British Virgin Islands) company. The BVI is a small, independent nation in the Caribbean renowned as an offshore jurisdiction with strict privacy regulations and no data retention laws.
3. We use 3rd party website analytics tools such as Google Analytics. We use Zendesk for support tickets and Snapengage for live chat. We believe that these are secure platforms.
Information about how you use the VPN itself (such as browsing history, traffic data or DNS queries) is never revealed to 3rd parties and is never logged or stored by ExpressVPN.
4. As we are a network service provider rather than a content host, there is nothing to take down. We also do not attempt to identify an ExpressVPN user in this case, report the user, or otherwise restrict service. Our customers should rest assured that their anonymity is protected.
5. VPN companies receive subpoenas and other legal requests as a matter of regular occurrence. This is one of the most significant advantages of our BVI jurisdiction. A court order would need to take place in the BVI for it to be legally valid. If we receive a request from another jurisdiction, we let them know that we don’t maintain logs that would enable us to match an IP address to an ExpressVPN user.
6. ExpressVPN allows all traffic including BitTorrent from all VPN servers and does not impose restrictions based on the type of traffic our users send.
7. ExpressVPN accepts all major credit cards including VISA, MasterCard and American Express. We also accept PayPal and a large number of local payment options. For users who want maximum privacy and don’t want to send us personally identifying payment information, we recommend bitcoin. In fact, we’ve written a complete guide to protecting your financial privacy with bitcoin.
8. In most cases we recommend (and default to) OpenVPN UDP. Our apps use a 4096-bit CA, AES-256-CBC encryption, TLSv1.2, and SHA512 signatures to authenticate our servers.
9. Yes, we call this leak protection feature “Network Lock”, and it is turned on by default. Network Lock prevents all types of traffic including IPv4, IPv6, and DNS from leaking outside of the VPN, such as when your Internet connection drops or in various additional scenarios where other VPNs might leak.
10. ExpressVPN has award-winning apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and routers. Our apps are designed to make it easy for users to choose a VPN location and get connected. They also offer much better security and privacy protection than manually configuring a VPN. With the ExpressVPN App for Routers, we make it easy to protect every device in your home using a VPN that is always connected.
11. Our VPN servers are hosted by trusted data centers with strong security practices. The data center employees do not have server credentials, and the server disks are fully encrypted to mitigate any risks from physical seizure. We run our own zero-knowledge DNS on every server (no 3rd party DNS).
12. ExpressVPN has thousands of high speed servers in 145 locations across 94 countries. See the full list here (TF note: some of these locations are virtual, see this explanation for more detail).
ExpressVPN website
TORGUARD
1. No logs or time stamps are kept whatsoever. TorGuard does not store any traffic logs or user session data on our network. In addition to a strict no logging policy we run a shared IP configuration across all servers. Because there are no logs kept and multiple users sharing a single IP address, it is not possible to match any user with an IP and time stamp.
2. TorGuard is owned and operated by VPNetworks LLC under US jurisdiction, with our parent company VPNetworks LTD, LLC based in Nevis.
3. We use anonymized Google Analytics data to optimize our website and Sendgrid for transactional email. TorGuard’s 24/7 live chat services are provided through Livechatinc’s platform. Customer support desk requests are maintained by TorGuard’s own private ticketing system.
4. In the event a valid DMCA notice is received it is immediately processed by our abuse team. Due to our no log and no time stamp policy and shared IP network – we are unable to forward any requests to a single user.
5. If a court order is received, it is first handled by our legal team and examined for validity in our jurisdiction. Should it be deemed valid, our legal representation would be forced to further explain the nature of our network and shared IP configuration and the fact that we do not hold any identifying logs or time stamps to pinpoint any specific user. We have never been able to identify any active user from an IP and time stamp.
6. Yes, BitTorrent and all P2P traffic is allowed. By default we do not block or limit any types of traffic across our network.
7. We currently offer over 200 different payment options. This includes all forms of credit card, PayPal, Bitcoin, altcoins (e.g. Ether, litecoin + more), Alipay, UnionPay, CashU, 100+ Gift Card brands, and many other methods local payment options. No user can be linked back to a billing account because we maintain zero logs across our network.
8. For best security, we advise clients to use OpenVPN and select the cipher option AES-256-CBC, with 4096bit RSA and SHA512 HMAC. We use TLS 1.2 on all servers with perfect forward secrecy enabled. For faster speeds and “obfuscated” Stealth VPN access, we suggest using OpenConnect SSL VPN with cipher option AES-256-GCM. TorGuard offers a wide range of VPN protocols, including OpenVPN, L2TP, IPsec, SSTP, OpenConnect/AnyConnect (SSL VPN), and iKEV2 – we still offer PPTP for those of you who need it, but we don’t recommend it.
9. TorGuard’s VPN software provides strict security features by automatically disabling IPv6 and blocking any potential DNS or WebRTC leaks. We offer a full connection kill switch that safeguards your VPN traffic against accidental disconnects and can hard kill your interfaces if needed, and an application kill switch that can terminate specific apps if the VPN connection is interrupted for additional safety. All recommended security features are enabled the moment you install TorGuard to ensure by default you have max security while tunneling through our network.
10. TorGuard’s popular VPN client is available for all versions of Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, Android, and iOS. We also offer easy DDWRT and Tomato setup tools for VPN routers, and a Firefox/Chrome SSL proxy app. To stay up to date with current security threats, our VPN software is actively developed and constantly evolving.
11. We retain full physical control over all hardware and only seek partnerships with data centers who can meet our strict security criteria. All servers are deployed and managed exclusively by TorGuard staff. Because there are no logs kept on any TorGuard VPN and Proxy servers, there is no risk of data theft should a machine become seized.
TorGuard VPN apps default to using internal secure no-log DNS servers that run on each VPN endpoint. We suggest this configuration for highest levels of privacy, however, clients can customize their DNS settings and choose from zero log TorGuard public DNS, Google DNS, Level3, or a customized DNS entry of their choosing.
12. TorGuard currently maintains thousands of servers in over 53 countries around the world, and we continue to expand the network every month. All customers get full access to our network.
TorGuard Reviews
ANONYMIZER
anony1. Anonymizer does not log ANY traffic that traverses our system, ever. We do not maintain any logs that would allow you to match an IP-address and time stamp to a user of our service.
2. Our company is registered as Anonymizer Inc. Anonymizer Inc. operates under U.S. jurisdiction where there are no data retention laws.
3. Anonymizer uses a ticketing system for support but does not request user verification unless it is needed specifically in support of a ticket. Anonymizer uses a bulk email service for email marketing but does not store any details on the individual email address that would connect them to being an existing customer.
Anonymizer uses Google Analytics and Google AdWords to support general marketing to new customers. Both of these tools do not store identifiable information on any unique customer or any way to identify a specific individual as a user of our service. We also actively ensure no link is created from the data in either system to any specific customer following a trial or purchase of our product.
4. Since Anonymizer does not log any traffic that comes over our system, we have nothing to provide in response to DMCA requests. None of our users have ever been issued a DMCA takedown notice or the European equivalent. We’ve been around for over two decades – making us one of the oldest services out there – and we’ve never turned over information of that kind.
5. Anonymizer Inc. is required by law to respond to all valid court orders and subpoenas. Since we do not log any traffic that comes over our system, we have nothing to provide in response to requests associated with service use. If a user paid by credit card we can only confirm that they purchased access to our service.
There is, and would be, no way to connect a specific user to specific traffic ever. There have been instances where we did receive valid court orders and followed the procedures above. In our 20 years of service, we have never identified details about a customer’s traffic or activities.
6. All traffic is allowed on all of our servers, so long as it complies with our EULA and Terms of Service.
7. Anonymizer Inc. uses a payment processor for our credit card payments. There is a record of the payment for the service and the billing information associated with the credit card confirming the service has been paid for. We also offer a cash payment option. Cash payment options do not store any details.
8. We would recommend OpenVPN for a user that is looking for the most secure connection. We feel it is the most reliable and stable connection protocol currently. Our OpenVPN implementation uses AES-256. We also offer L2TP/IPSEC.
9. Anonymizer’s client software does not support IPv6 connections. All customers are asked to disable IPv6 connections for the application to function. Our client software does have the option to enable a kill switch that prevents any web traffic from exiting your machine without going through the VPN.
10. We offer a custom VPN application for MacOS and Windows. Our default application log only logs fatal errors that occur within the application which prevents the application from running.
11. We own ALL of our hardware and have full physical control of our servers. No third party has access to our environment. We operate our own DNS servers.
12. We have servers in the United States and Netherlands.
Anonymizer website
IPREDATOR
1. No logs are retained that would allow the correlation of a user’s IP address to a VPN address. The session database does not include the origin IP address of the user. Once a connection has been terminated the session information is deleted from the session database.
2. The name of the company is PrivActually Ltd. which operates out of Cyprus.
3. We do not use any visitor tracking mechanism, not even passive ones analyzing the webserver logs. We run our own mail infrastructure and do not use 3rd party products like Gmail. Neither do we use data hogs like a ticket system to manage support requests. We stick to a simple mail system and delete old data after three months from our mail boxes.
4. The staff forwards DMCA notices to the BOFH Notices sent via paper are usually converted into energy by combustion … to power the data center in the basement where the BOFH lives. Digital SPAM^WDMCA notices are looped back into the kernel to increase the VPNs /dev/random devices entropy.
5. We evaluate the request according to the legal frameworks set forth in the jurisdictions we operate in and react accordingly. We had multiple cases where somebody tried but did not succeed to identify active users on the system.
6. Besides filtering SMTP on port 25 we do not impose any restrictions on protocols our users can use on the VPN, quite the contrary. We believe our role is to provide a net-neutral internet access. Every user is free to share his/her/its files. We are conservative people and firmly believe in the heritage of our society, which was built upon the free exchange of cultural knowledge. This new age patent system, and the idea that we need companies who milk creators are simply alien to us.
7. We offer PayPal, Bitcoins, Payza, and Payson fully integrated. OkPay, Transferwise, WU, PerfectMoney, Webmoney, Amazon Giftcards, Cash and Credit Cards on request. An internal transaction ID is used to line payments to their payment processors. We do not store any other data about payments associated with the user’s account.
8. We provide up to date config files and enforce TLS1.2 for the control channel on all supported systems. For further protection, we provide detailed setup instructions for our users. Besides the public and VPN internal DNS servers we also support DNSCrypt as a means to encrypt DNS requests. Howto’s for kill switches are available as well. We do not enforce a particular client.
9. Users can connect to a dual stack VPN pool that provides IPv4 as well as IPv6 connectivity. Unfortunately enabling IPv6 for all clients still breaks quite a few setups. Hopefully broader adoption of the OpenVPN 2.4 branch will allow us to work properly. Users can use this page to check for a number of leaks.
Kill switches that provide protection from connection drops are part of the client installation. There is not much we can do against that on the server side. If the user’s client of choice has built-in support for kill switches, he/she can just use that. If people use the vanilla OpenVPN client, the up/down script hooks provide everything needed to handle custom configs to terminate applications when the VPN connection drops.
DNS and IPv6 leaks are just two issues among many that users face in their quest for online privacy. Most privacy issues cannot be easily fixed by the VPN provider itself, but require knowledge and diligence of the users themselves. We therefore ask our users to go through our interactive checklist to improve their online piracy.
10. No, we do not offer a custom VPN application to our users. Users are free to choose which client they want to use. We think that giving users a closed source client is against our core principles.
Since there is no good cross platform client we thought to give it a try and build one of our own making-called Netsplice. PGP signed binary packages for Windows, OSX, Linux along with the
current sources can be downloaded from our site. Please note that Netsplice is still alpha software.
11. We own our complete setup, network, and data center with everything in it – no 3rd parties are allowed access. We do not trust in 3rd parties operating our core infrastructure.
There are dedicated DNS servers that are given to clients for resolving DNS queries from within the VPN. Furthermore, we encourage users to use DNScrypt or similar technologies. Ideally splitting their DNS queries over multiple DNScrypt instances and running a local resolver to minimize DNS requests in the first place.
12. They are in Sweden due to the laws that allow us to run our service in a privacy-protecting manner. In times where basically everyone in the VPN market is advertising with servers in a gazillion countries, this might seem like a disadvantage. We see this very differently.
The core for any privacy service is trust in the integrity of the underlying infrastructure. Everything else has to build upon that. There is no way we could run such a tight ship and controlled environment with servers all over the world, and we will not compromise on the quality of our setup.
Ipredator website
SLICKVPN
1. SlickVPN does not log any traffic nor session data of any kind.
2. Slick Networks, Inc. is our recognized corporate name. We operate a complex business structure with multiple layers of Offshore Holding Companies, Subsidiary Holding Companies, and finally some Operating Companies to help protect our interests. The main marketing entity for our business is based in the United States of America and an operational entity is based out of Nevis.
3. We utilize third party email systems to contact clients who opt in for our newsletters and Google Analytics for basic website traffic monitoring and troubleshooting.
4. If a valid DMCA complaint is received while the offending connection is still active, we stop the session and notify the active user of that session. Otherwise, we are unable to act on any complaint as we have no way of tracking down the user. It is important to note that we ALMOST NEVER receive a VALID DMCA complaint while a user is still in an active session.
5. This has never happened in the history of our company. Our customer’s privacy is of top most importance to us. We are required to comply with all valid court orders. We would proceed with the court order with complete transparency, but we have no data to provide any court in any jurisdiction. We would not rule out relocating our businesses to a new jurisdiction if required.
6. Yes, all traffic is allowed.
7. We accept PayPal, Credit Cards, Bitcoin, Cash, and Money Orders. We keep user authentication and billing information on independent platforms. One platform is operated out of the United States of America and the other platform is operated out of Nevis. We offer the ability for the customer to permanently delete their payment information from our servers at any point. All customer data is automatically removed from our records shortly after the customer ceases being a paying member.
8. We recommend using OpenVPN if at all possible (available for Windows, Apple, Linux, iOS, Android) and it uses the AES-256-CBC algorithm for encryption.
9. Our Windows and Mac client disable IPv6 as part of our IP and DNS leak protection. Our IP leak protection proactively keeps your IPv4 and IPv6 traffic from leaking to untrusted networks. Your network will be disabled if you lose the connection to our servers and the only way to restore the network is manual intervention by the user.
10. Yes. Our users are provided with a custom client, designed by our in-house engineers. Currently, the client works with Windows and Mac products. Our client does NOT store logs on customer computers by default. We also provide guides for every other platform.
11. We run a mix. We physically control some of our server locations where we have a heavier load. Other locations are hosted with third parties unless there is enough demand in that location to justify racking our own server setup. To ensure redundancy, we host with multiple providers in each location. We have server locations in over forty countries.
In all cases, our network nodes load over our encrypted network stack and run from ramdisk. Anyone taking control of the server would have no usable data on the disk. We run an algorithm to randomly reboot each server on a regular basis so we can clear the ramdisk. DNS is assigned by the server when a user logs in.
12. At SlickVPN we actually go through the expense of putting a physical server in each country that we list. SlickVPN offers service in 40 countries around the world
SlickVPN reviews
MULLVAD
VPN review1. No.
2. Amagicom AB, Sweden.
3. We have no external elements at all on our website. We do use external email and encourage people who send us email to use PGP encryption, which is the only effective way to keep email somewhat private. The decrypted content is only available to us.
4. There is no such Swedish law that applies to us.
5. We get requests from governments from time to time. They never get any information about our users. We make sure not to store sensitive information that can be tied to publicly available information so that we have nothing to give out. We believe it is not possible in Swedish law to construct a court order that would compel us to actually give out information about our users. Not that we would anyway. We started this service for political reasons and would rather discontinue it than having it work against its purpose.
6. We do not block or throttle BitTorrent or other file-sharing protocols. All traffic is treated equally.
7. We explain that in more detail here, but we offer Bank Wire, Swish, PayPal (CreditCards), Bitcoin and cash. Cash and Bitcoin are the most anonymous. We run our own full Bitcoin node and don’t use third parties for any step in the bitcoin payment process, from the generation of QR codes to adding time to accounts.
8. OpenVPN, AES256, handshake encryption RSA-2048.
9. We offer the option to tunnel or not tunnel IPv6 (if not – IPv6 is blocked), and the kill-switch and DNS leak protection works the same for IPv6 as IPv4. There is both a kill switch in our client and a SOCK5 proxy that is only accessible via our VPN (i.e. if you set your browser to use it, the browser will not work if the VPN is down).
10. Yes: Windows, Mac, Linux
11. We have physical control at four sites. Three in Sweden and one in Amsterdam (I.e. all servers in Sweden and Amsterdam). The rest is hosted by carefully selected providers. Yes, we use our own DNS servers.
12. Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Rep., Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, USA
An up to date list is available here.
Mullvad website
BLACKVPN
VPN review1. No. We purge all this information when the user disconnects from the VPN.
2. The name of the company is BLACKVPN LIMITED and is registered in Hong Kong and operates under the jurisdiction of Hong Kong.
3. We run our own email server plus support and live chat systems using open source tools. We use StreamSend for sending generic welcome and renewal reminder emails, as well as for the occasional news updates. We have Twitter widgets on our frontpage that may track visitors. We use Google Analytics as well as our own website analytics (Piwik).
4. We block the port on the server listed in the notice.
5. If we received a valid court order from a Hong Kong court, then we would be legally obliged to obey it. So far this has never happened.
6. Bittorrent traffic is not restricted in our Privacy VPN locations, but due to stricter enforcement of DMA notices in the USA and UK we restrict most BitTorrent traffic and only whitelist torrents of open source software.
7. PayPal, Bitcoin and PaymentWall (for Credit Cards and Bank Transfers). The transaction details (ID, time, amount, etc) are linked to each user account.
8. We recommend to use OpenVPN 2.4 and we support the new GCM cipher mode (AES-256-GCM) together with 4096 bit RSA and Diffie Hellman keys. With OpenVPN, we also enforce DHE/ECDHE enabled cipher suites and key exchange is done with Diffie-Hellman, providing forward secrecy.
9. For OpenVPN, we stop IPv6 leaks with the OpenVPN config, and we also disable and blackhole all IPv6 traffic server side. The open source OpenVPN client has DNS leak prevention built in and in most cases will not leak data during reconnections. Our upcoming custom VPN app will be able to provide 100% IPV6 and DNS leak protection client side and will also have a “kill switch”.
10. We have a custom open source Android app and we are working on custom Windows/MacOS app aswell. For the moment we build pre-configured versions of the open source OpenVPN clients for Windows and MacOS.
11. We use dedicated servers which are hosted in 3rd party data centers, but they do not have access to login or manage the server. We run our own DNS servers which do not save any logs.
12. USA, UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland and Ukraine.
BlackVPN website
VPNAREA
vpnarea1. We do not keep or record any logs. We’re therefore not able to match an IP-address and a time stamp to a user of our service. We also do not keep or record any usage logs.
2. The registered name of our company is “Offshore Security EOOD” (spelled “ОФШОРСЕКЮРИТИ ЕООД” in Bulgarian). We’re a VAT registered business. We operate under the jurisdiction of Bulgaria.
3. The only external tool we use is Zopim LiveChat. Our email system is hosted on our own servers in Switzerland. We use Email and OsTickets for support which are hosted on our own servers in Switzerland. We also offer Skype as a support option.
4. DMCA notices are not forwarded to our members as we’re unable to identify a responsible user due to not having any logs. We would reply to the DMCA notices explaining that we do not host or hold any copyrighted content ourselves and we’re not able to identify or penalize a user of our service.
5. This has not happened yet. Shall it happen our attorney will examine the validity of the court order in accordance with our jurisdiction, we will then delegate our no logs policy to the appropriate party pointing out that we’re not able to match a user to an IP or timestamp due to not keeping or recording any logs.
6. BitTorrent/P2P is allowed on most of our servers but not all of them. Why not? Some servers that we use are not tolerant to DMCA notices, but some of our members utilize them for other activities not related to Torrenting. That is why we keep them in our network despite the inability to use P2P/torrents on them. Most of our VPN servers and locations do allow torrents and P2P.
7. We accept PayPal, Credit/Debit cards and Webmoney via 3rd party payment processor, Bitcoin, Payza. We do not require personal details to register an account with us. In the case of Bitcoin payments, we do not link users to transactions. In the case of PayPal/Payza/Card payments we link usernames to their transactions so we can process a refund. We do not have recurring payments system.
8. We use AES-256-CBC + RSA2048 + SHA256 cipher on all our VPN servers without exception. We also have Double VPN servers, where for example the traffic goes through Russia and Israel before reaching the final destination.
9. In both our Windows and Mac software we have the optional setting to disable IPv6 connectivity on the computer to prevent IPv6 leaks. We have DNS leak protection as an optional setting in our Windows, Mac and Android apps. We have Killswitch in our Windows and Mac software.
10. We do have custom VPN applications for Windows, Mac, Android. We’ve custom app for iOS too, which servers as a helper tool for “OpenVPN Connect”.
11. We work with reliable and established data centers. Nobody but us has virtual access to our servers. The entire logs directories are wiped out and disabled, rendering possible physical brute force access to the servers useless in terms of identifying users.
12. We currently have servers in 65 countries.
VPNArea website
IPVANISH
ipvanish1. IPVanish is a no log VPN.
2. Mudhook Marketing, Inc. The State of Florida
3. We use basic inbound marketing tools like Google Analytics, but we do not track or store personally identifiable information (PII) from these tools. We also do not track the browsing activities of users who are logged into our VPN service.
4. We do not store, host, stream or provide any content, media, images or files that would be subject to a properly formed takedown notice.
5. First, any request has to be a valid and lawful request before we will even acknowledge the request. If the request is for user data or identification of a subscriber based on an IP address, we inform the agency making the request that we do not keep any logs and we operate in a Jurisdiction that does not require mandatory data retention.
Sometimes, legal agencies or authorities may not be happy with this response. We politely remind them that IPVanish operates within the letter of the law and is a valid and needed service to protect the privacy of its subscribers.
6. Yes, BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic is allowed.
7. Bitcoin, PayPal, and all major credit cards are accepted. Payments and service use are in no way linked.
8. We recommend OpenVPN with 256 bit AES as the most secure VPN connection and encryption algorithm.
9. IPVanish has a Kill Switch feature that terminates all network traffic to prevent any DNS leaks in the event your VPN connection drops. We also have a user-enabled option that automatically changes your IP address randomly at selected time intervals. We currently do not support IPv6. This will be rolled in with an upcoming update. All traffic is forced over IPv4 to prevent IP leaks.
10. We offer a custom VPN application for iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac. IPVanish is also configurable with DD-WRT and Tomato routers (pre-configured routers available), gaming consoles, Ubuntu and Chromebook.
11. We own and have physical control over our entire operational infrastructure, including the servers. Unlike other VPN services, we actually own and operate a global IP network backbone optimized for VPN delivery which insures the fastest speeds of any VPN provider.
12. We have servers in over 60 countries including the US, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and more. You can view the complete list on our VPN servers page.
IPVanish website
IVPN
ivpn1. No, not doing so is fundamental to any privacy service regardless of the security or policies implemented to protect the log data. In addition, it is not within our interest to do so as it would increase our liability and is not required by the laws of any jurisdiction that IVPN operates in.
2. Privatus Limited, Gibraltar.
3. No. We made a strategic decision from day one that no company or customer data would ever be stored on 3rd party systems. Our customer support software, email, web analytics (Piwik), issue tracker, monitoring servers, code repos, configuration management servers etc all run on our own dedicated servers that we setup, configure and manage. No 3rd parties have access to our servers or data.
4. Our legal department sends a reply stating that we do not store content on our servers and that our VPN servers act only as a conduit for data. In addition, we inform them that we never store the IP addresses of customers connected to our network nor are we legally required to do so.
5. Firstly, this has never happened. However, if asked to identify a customer based on a timestamp and/or IP address then we would reply factually that we do not store this information, so we are unable to provide it. If they provide us with an email address and we are asked for the customer’s identity, then we would reply that we do not store any personal data.
If the company is served with a valid court order that did not breach the Data Protection Act 2004, we could only confirm that an email address was or was not associated with an active account at the time in question.
6. Yes, all file sharing traffic is permitted and treated equally on all servers. We do encourage customers to use non-USA based exit servers for P2P as any company receiving a large number of DMCA notices is exposing themselves to legal action and our upstream providers have threatened to disconnect our servers in the past.
7. We accept Bitcoin, Cash, PayPal and credit cards. When using cash, there is no link to a user account within our system. When using Bitcoin, we store the Bitcoin transaction ID in our system. If you wish to remain anonymous to IVPN you should take the necessary precautions when purchasing Bitcoin. When paying with PayPal or a credit card a token is stored that is used to process recurring payments. This information is deleted immediately when an account is terminated.
8. We provide RSA-4096 / AES-256 with OpenVPN, which we believe is more than secure enough for our customers’ needs. If you are the target of a state level adversary or other such well-funded body you should be far more concerned with increasing your general opsec (e.g. $5 wrench – https://xkcd.com/538/) than worrying about 2048 vs 4096 bit keys.
9. This is a huge problem for most VPN providers as shown by the comprehensive tests undertaken at VPNtesting.info (IVPN sponsored this project).
The IVPN client offers an advanced VPN firewall that blocks every type of IP leak possible including IPv6, DNS, network failures, WebRTC STUN etc.). It is impossible to any data to leak if a connection drops as the firewall will not deactivate until explicitly instructed to do so. It also has an ‘always on’ mode that will be activated on boot before any process on the computer starts to ensure than no packets are ever able to leak outside of the VPN tunnel, regardless of the connection state of the VPN.
10. Yes, we offer a custom OpenVPN client for Windows and MacOS which includes our advanced VPN firewall that blocks every type of possible IP leak. We have also recently released an iOS app and plan to release an Android version later this year.
11. We use bare metal dedicated servers leased from 3rd party data centers in each country where we have a presence. We install each server using our own custom images and employ full disk encryption to ensure that if a server is ever seized the data is worthless.
We also operate an exclusive multi-hop network allowing customers to choose an entry and exit server in different jurisdictions which would make the task of legally gaining access to servers at the same time significantly more difficult. We run our own network of log free DNS servers that are only accessible to our customers.
12. A full list is available here.
IVPN website
LIQUIDVPN
liquid1. No we do not store any logs that could be used to match an IP address and timestamp back to a LiquidVPN user.
2. LiquidVPN INC. Cheyenne, Wyoming
3. We use Google Analytics on our front end web site. Everything else is self-hosted.
4. If the data center requires us to answer DMCA complaints, then we let them know that these files are not hosted locally and that because we do not keep logs on user activity it is impossible for us to investigate the DMCA complaint further.
5. No we have not received any court orders. We would have to explain to law enforcement that the only way we could provide information about a user on our network was if they were able to provide us with enough information to identify the user in our system. Basically they would need to provide billing information or the users registered email address.
If they were able to provide this information we would be required to hand over the user’s email address, registered first name and transactional information. There is no other way to identify a user on our system. We would publish any correspondence from law enforcement to our transparency section on the website and if we were not allowed to do that we would stop updating our Warrant Canary.
6. All file sharing traffic is allowed and given equal priority on any server within our network.
7. For anonymity, we recommend bitcoin which requires a first name and email address only. We accept PayPal which requires a first name and email address. Finally, when a user pays via credit card their address, first name and email address is required.
8. I would recommend users connect to any of our OpenVPN servers because they use 256 Bit AES / Camellia, 4096 Bit RSA keys, they use TLS-DHE-RSA-AES-256-CBC-SHA, SHA2 HMAC digest (SHA512) if they want added privacy we would recommend using IP Modulation which randomly modifies the source public IP address per packet on all of a user’s traffic.
9. IPv6 support is on the roadmap for this year. Until its fully supported IPv6 leaks are blocked via our client. We do provide DNS leak protection and a full on VPN firewall that goes well beyond the protection from a standard VPN killswitch.
10. Our custom applications work for Windows, Mac and Android.
11. All of our VPN servers are bare metal servers that we control. Our servers are not accessible by anyone except us. We do provide private DNS servers and SmartDNS for free. Users can access USA and UK content from any server on our network.
12. We have servers in 17 data centers and 11 countries in North America, Europe and Asia.
LiquidVPN website
SMARTVPN
smartvpn
1. We don’t have enough space on our servers PoPs to keep logs (True story).
2. The company name is Anonymous SARL and operates under the jurisdiction of the Kingdom of Morocco.
3. We use Google Analytics and Tawk live support.
4. What about ignoring them? Since there is nothing to takedown.
5. This has never happened before, but we won’t be able to cater to their demand as we can’t identify that user within our system.
6. BitTorrent and other P2P protocols are allowed on all our servers.
7. We use BitPay (BitCoins) and PayPal
8. We recommend OpenVPN for Desktop and IKEv2 for Mobile devices. For encryption we use the AES-256-CBC algorithm. DNS leak protection is already enabled however “kill switches” will be available soon.
9. We don’t provide IPv6 support as of now.
10. We provide a custom VPN application for Mac and Windows-based on OpenVPN, and Mobile apps (Android and iOS) based on IKEv2.
11. We have a mix. Physical control over most of our infrastructure and some exotic locations are hosted by 3rd party partners.
12. A full list is available here.
SmartVPN website
PRIVATEVPN
privatevpn1. We do not keep ANY logs that allow us or a third party to match an IP address and a time stamp to a user of our service. We highly value the privacy of our customers.
2. Privat Kommunikation Sverige AB and we operate under Swedish jurisdiction.
3. We use a service from Provide Support (ToS) for live support. They do not hold any information about the chat session. From Provide support: Chat conversation transcripts are not stored on Provide Support chat servers. They remain on the chat server for the duration of the chat session, then optionally sent by email according to the user account settings, and then destroyed.
We’re also using Google Analytics and Statcounter for collecting static of how many visitors we have, popular pages and conversion of all ads. This data is used for optimization of the website and advertising.
4. We’ll say that we don’t store any logs of our customers’ activity. Privacy and anonymity of our customers are something we really value and due to our non-logging policy, DMCA notices will be ignored.
5. Due to our policy of NOT keeping any logs, there is nothing to provide about users of our service. To clarify, we do not log or have any data on our customer’s activities. We have never received any court order.
6. Yes, we allow Torrent traffic on all servers. All traffic is treated equally and we do not, under any circumstances, throttle our traffic. We buy high-capacity internet traffic so we can meet the demands. On some locations, we use Tier1 IP transit providers for best speed and routing to other peers.
7. PayPal, Stripe and Bitcoin. Every payment has an order number, which is always linked to a user. Otherwise, we would not know who has made a payment. To be clear, no one can link a payment to an IP address you get from our service or online user activity.
8. OpenVPN TUN with AES-256. On top is a 2048-bit DH key
9. For our Windows VPN client, we have a feature called “Connection guard”, which will close a selected program(s) if the connection drops. We have no tools yet for DNS leaks but the best way, which is always 100%, is to change the local DNS on the device to DNS servers we provide. Right now, our developers are working on a new feature that will protect from DNS leaks and a new version of the kill switch. Protection against IPv6 leaks will also be implemented in new VPN application.
10. Yes, we’re offering our own customized VPN application for Windows, iOS (iPhone/iPad), Android and MacOS(OS X) with features that help to protect our customers.
11. We have physical control over our servers and network in Sweden. We’re only using trusted data centers with strong security. Our providers have no access to PrivateVPN’s servers and most importantly, there are no customer data/activities stored on the VPN servers or on any other system we have.
12. See here and here.
PrivateVPN website
CRYPTOSTORM
cryptostorm
1. Nope, no logs. We use OpenVPN with logs set to /dev/null, and we’ve even gone the extra mile by preventing client IPs from appearing in the temporary “status” logs using our patch available at https://cryptostorm.is/noip.diff.
2. We’re a decentralized project, with intentional separation of loosely-integrated project components. We own no intellectual property, patents, trademarks, or other such things that would require a corporate entity in which ownership could be enforced by the implied threat of State-backed violence; all our code is published and licensed opensource.
3. No, we don’t use any external visitor tracking or email providers.
4. Our choice is to reply to any such messages that are not obviously generated by automated (and quite likely illegal) spambots. In our replies, we ask for sufficient forensic data to ascertain whether the allegation has enough merit to warrant any further consideration. We have yet to receive such forensic data in response to such queries, despite many hundreds of such replies over the years.
5. See above. We have never received any valid court orders requesting the identity of a user, but if we ever did receive such a request, it would be impossible for us to comply as we keep no such information.
6. Yes, all traffic is allowed.
7. We accept PayPal and payments using Stripe (includes Bitcoin), although we will manually process any other altcoin if a customer wishes. We don’t have financial information connected in any way to the real-life identity of our network members; our token-based authentication system removes this systemic connection, and thus obviates any temptation to “squeeze” us for private data about network membership.
We quite simply know nothing about anyone using our network, save for the fact that they have a non-expired (SHA512 hash of a) token when they connect. Also, we now process Stripe orders instantly in-browser.
8. We only support one cipher suite on-net. Offering “musical chairs” style cipher suite roulette is bad opsec, bad cryptography, and bad administrative practice. There is no need to support deprecated, weak, or known-broken suites in these network security models; unlike browser-based https/tls, there are no legacy client-side software suites that must be supported. As such, any excuse for deploying weak cipher suites is untenable.
Everyone on Cryptostorm receives equal and full security attention, including those using our free/capped service “Cryptofree.”
There are no “kill switch” tools available today that actually work. We have tested them, and until we have developed tools that pass intensive forensic scrutiny at the NIC level, we will not claim to have such. Several in-house projects are in the works, but none are ready yet for public testing.
We take standard steps to encourage client-side computing environments to route DNS queries through our sessions when connected. However, we cannot control things such as router-based DNS queries, Teredo-based queries that slip out via IPv6, or unscrupulous application-layer queries to DNS resolvers that, while sent in-tunnel, nevertheless may be using arbitrary resolver addressing. Our Windows client attempts to prevent some of this, but it’s currently impossible to do so completely.
We are saddened to see others who claim they have such “magical” tools; getting a “pass” from a handful of “DNS leak” websites is not the same as protecting all DNS query traffic. Those who fail to understand that are in need of remedial work on network architecture.
As we run our own mesh-based system of DNS resolvers, “deepDNS”, we have full and arbitrary control over all levels of DNS resolution presentation to third parties.
9. We only handle IPv4 connections, we are currently looking into IPv6, but that’s work in progress. Our widget prevents against IPv6 leaks, and we advise our customers on how to prevent leaks on other platforms.
10. We offer an open source application written in Perl (dubbed the “CS widget”), source code available at GitHub. Currently only for Windows, but we are working on porting it to Linux. The application is essentially an OpenVPN GUI with some tweaks here and there to prevent different types of leaks (DNS, IPv6, etc.) and to make connecting as easy as possible. Output from the back end OpenVPN process is shown in the GUI. When you exit the program, that data is forgotten.
11. We deploy nodes in commodity data centers that are themselves stripped of all customer data and thus disposable in the face of any potential attacks that may compromise integrity. We have in the past taken down such nodes based on an alert from onboard systems and offsite, independently maintained remote logs that confirmed a violation was taking place.
It is important to note that such events do not explicitly require us to have physical control of the machine in question: we push nameserver updates, via our HAF (Hostname Assignment Framework) out via redundant, parallel channels to all connected members and by doing so we can take down any node on the network within less than 10 minutes of initial commit.
We have constructed a mesh-topology system of redundant, self-administered secure DNS resolvers which has been collected under the label of “deepDNS”. deepDNS is a full in-house mechanism that prevents any DNS related metadata from being tied to any particular customer. It also allows us to provide other useful features such as transparent .onion, .i2p, .p2p, etc. access. There is also DNSCrypt support on all deepDNS servers to help protect pre-connect DNS queries.
12. Our server list is available here.
CryptoStorm website
BUFFERED
1. We keep some connection logs for troubleshooting purposes but don’t store any information that would allow us to match an IP and timestamp to a specific user. We don’t log the user’s IP-address either.
2. Buffered Ltd., Gibraltar.
3. Yes.
4. We don’t encourage violating copyrights and we do discourage this sort of behavior. As a Gibraltar company we acknowledge every DMCA or abuse communication we get and direct them to our terms of service. Other than this we do not monitor what our customers are doing.
5. This has never happened so far, but we have to be in compliance with the laws while also trying to fully protect our users.
6. Yes and yes.
7. Credit cards and paypal, we plan on adding btc soon.
8. We currently use blowfish which is very fast and no known attacks exist, we will transition to AES later because these days it is mostly hardware accelerated and is a stronger encryption (albeit slower).
9. We do not support ipv6 and we recommend disabling it, so no leaks. No, kill switch either. The concept of the kill switch is inherently flawed and can never be 100% foolproof.
10. Mac and Windows, standard openvpn clients on all other platforms (including mobiles). We are in the process of developing our mobile clients, they’ll be released Q1 ‘17.
11. No, we rent our servers from reputable providers. Every buffered vpn server is a DNS server which the clients can use.
12. On our homepage you’ll find the list of server countries.
Buffered website
BOLEHVPN
bolehvpn1. We do not keep any logs on our VPN servers that would allow us to do this.
2. BV Internet Services Limited, Seychelles
3. We use Zendesk to deal with support queries and do track referrals from affiliates. We however provide the option to send us PGP encrypted messages via e-mail and also Zendesk. We also do not use Cloudflare. We also have an opt-in only education/blog list that uses Hubspot. For announcements we use our own e-mail system.
4. We generally find providers that are friendly towards such DMCA notices or where it cannot be avoided, we just keep them as Surfing/Streaming servers with P2P disabled. These servers are more for geo-location or general purpose surfing rather than P2P. We at no times give out customer information to handle this.
5. There has been a German police request for certain information in relation to a blackmail incident. Despite it appearing legitimate, we could not assist as we did not have any user logs. We maintain a warrant canary at https://www.bolehvpn.net/canary.txt which we do update once a month or when there is a request for information (even if we have not complied with it).
6. Most servers support P2P except those marked as Surfing-Streaming which are with providers with strict DMCA requirements. All other servers support P2P and are not treated differently from any other traffic.
7. Paypal, Paymentwall, Coinpayments, Paydollar, MolPay and we also accept direct Bitcoin/Dash payments.
8. We recommend OpenVPN and our cloak servers that use AES-256 bit encryption and a XOR patch that obfuscates your traffic as being VPN traffic.
9. We provide IPv6 leakage protection.
10. We have a custom application for Windows and Mac and also a slightly modified version for Android.
11. They are bare metal boxes hosted in various providers. We do use our own DNS servers.
12. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and USA.
BolehVPN website
AZIREVPN
azire1. No, we don’t.
2. The registered name is Netbouncer AB, operating under Swedish jurisdiction.
3. No, we refuse to use 3rd party software. E-mail, ticket system and other
services are hosted in-house on open-source software.
4. We politely inform the sender party that we cannot help them since it is not possible for us to identify the user.
5. This has not happened yet, but in the case a valid court order would be issued, we will inform the other party that is it not possible to identify an active user of our service.
6. Yes, all protocols are allowed.
7. We accept payments through Bitcoin (Bitpay), Paypal, Credit Cards and Swish.
8. We recommend our users to use our default configuration we supply with
OpenVPN 2.4:
– AES-256-GCM data-channel
– TLS-ECDHE-RSA-WITH-AES-256-GCM-SHA384 TLS
– HMAC-SHA512 authentication
– 4096 bit key size using a Diffie-Hellman key exchange
– 2048 bit TLS additional auth key
– 2048 bit TLS additional crypt key
9. We assign IPv6 addresses on all our locations, overriding the local IPv6 assigned to the client. Currently we provide guides to prevent DNS leaks and also for kill switches on some operating systems. Our new client will soon get integrated kill switch, and DNS leak prevention is already in place for some platforms.
10. Yes, we do offer a custom VPN application for all desktop platforms (Windows, MacOS and Linux), with source-code released on Github.
11. Yes, we own our hardware, co-located in dedicated racks on different data centers around the globe. We do host our own DNS servers. One thing that is very important for us is the hardware installation on new locations – we always bring the hardware there on our own, to make sure that it is being installed as per our own guidelines and no kind of foul play by another party can take place. Next step is the start video documenting the process for each new location for full transparency.
12. As of now; Sweden, US, United Kingdom and Spain. With Canada, Moldova and more US locations during 2017’s roadmap.
AzireVPN website[/expand]
VPNBARON
vpnbaron1. No, we don’t! No traffic logs are recorded. We monitor only the number of simultaneous user connections on our network as a whole, and do not link the user to a particular server. This helps us avoid infinite simultaneous connections from a single user.
2. Our registered legal name is Hexville SRL. We’re under Romanian jurisdiction, inside of the European Union. EU takes privacy issues more seriously than the US, as many already know.
3. For our sales site analytics, we rely on Google Analytics. Other than that, all our systems and support tools belong to us and are hosted in-house.
4. None of our users ever received a DMCA notice while connected to our service, being unable to detect the source user, due to our no traffic logging policy. On our end, we have an internal procedure of dealing with the DMCA claim that goes unnoticed by our users and of the users’ privacy is not affected.
5. No subpoena has been received by our company. If it will happen, we’ll be sure to assist as much as we’re legally obliged. Keep in mind that we don’t have any information stored about our users, except their login credentials.
6. Yes, it is allowed. We don’t restrict traffic in any way. Net neutrality is king.
7. We use Bitcoins (and many other kinds of virtual currencies), PayPal and Credit Cards. The lack of traffic logs does not allow any linkage between the individual accounts.
8. We take security very seriously at VPNBaron. We use only OpenVPN protocol, one of the most secure and hard to crack protocols, with AES-256-CBC cipher, TLSv1/SSLv3 DHE-RSA-AES512-SHA, 2048 bit RSA.
On top of the OpenVPN, you can also choose one of the two anti DPI (Deep Package Inspection) protocols: “TOR’s OBFSPROXY Scamblesuit” and “SSL” that mask your VPN connection from your ISP. These protocols come handy in places that actively block VPN connections, like China, Egypt or university campuses.
9. There is no difference in user experience regardless of the users’ IP type. Using the OpenVPN protocol, we do not have IPv6 leaks as these issues have been addressed in the latest OpenVPN versions. The same goes for DNS Leaks. OpenVPN has added a setting that deals with DNS leaks.
On top of that, we also provide another DNS Leak protection system that we developed before the protocol was updated and a killswitch feature that disables the network card if there is any risk of the users’ privacy being breached, temporarily disconnected the device from the internet. These settings can be activated or deactivated as the user wishes.
10. We offer a light and easy to use app for windows. For the other platforms we offer automation scripts and visual guides that get the user up and running in no time, regardless of the users’ tech savviness.
11. Our VPN servers have minimal data and do not store any private information. We do not have physical control of the servers, but we have unlimited access. This allows us to offer locations from all over the world.
12. We offer more than 30 servers in 18 countries and we’re expanding fast. You can find the full list here.
VPNBaron website
ACEVPN
ace1. We do not log, period. We respect our users’ privacy. IPs are shared amongst users and our configuration makes it extremely difficult to single out any user.
2. We are registered in the USA and operate as Acevpn.com and the name of the company is Securenet.
3. We use Google Analytics on www.acevpn.com (marketing site). For emails, we use Google cloud and these are regularly purged.
4. We block the port mentioned in the complaint. IPs are shared by other users and our configuration makes it extremely difficult to single out any user. We do not share or sell any information to 3rd parties.
5. To date, we have not received a court order or subpoena. Our users cannot be identified based on IP address.
6. We have special servers for P2P and are in data centers that allow such traffic. These servers also have additional security to protect privacy when P2P programs are running.
7. We accept Bitcoin, PayPal, and Credit cards for payments. We store billing information on a secure server separate from VPN servers.
8. For higher security needs we suggest using our IPSEC IKEv2 VPN or our OpenVPN with Elliptic Curve Encryption which we are rolling out as we speak. Both these protocols use next gen cryptographic algorithms and AES 256 bit data encryption suitable for top secret communication. Read about our IKEv2 implementation.
9. We provide kill switches if a connection drops. Our servers are tested for DNS leaks. Our service is currently IPv4 only, so no ipv6 leaks.
10. We use an unmodified OpenVPN client that is signed by the developers. Our users are encouraged to use a VPN client of their choice. We do not offer custom applications at this time.
11. We have full control over our servers. Servers are housed in reputed data centers. Many of them are ISO certified and are designed to the highest specifications for performance, reliability, and security. We operate our own DNS servers (Smart DNS) for streaming videos. For VPN, we use Google and Level3 DNS.
12. We have servers in 26+ countries and over 50+ locations.
AceVPN website
OCTANEVPN
octane1. No. Our gateway servers operate out of an encrypted RAM Disk volume that loads remotely on boot. When they are powered down, the RAM Disk is lost.
2. We operate as two separate companies. Octane Networks is a US registered company and handles customer-facing communications. The infrastructure company is a Nevis-based company and manages all the network infrastructure.
3. We use Google Analytics for general website trends. We use Hotjar occasionally for A/B and user experience testing. Support is internal.
4. If we receive a DMCA notice or its equivalent based on activity that occurred in the past, we respond that we do not host any content and have no logs. If we receive a realtime DMCA notice where the customer VPN session is still active when the DMCA notice is processed, we notify the customer if we have sufficient information to do so. No customer data is used to respond to DMCA notices.
5. This has not happened. Our customers’ privacy is a top priority for us. We would handle a court order with complete transparency.
A court order would likely be based on an issue traced to a gateway server IP address and would, therefore, be received by our network operations company which is Nevis based. The validity of court orders from other countries would be difficult to enforce. The network company has no customer data and no log data, so if it were compelled to respond to a court order, our response would likely lack the type of information requested.
Our marketing company is US-based and would respond to an order issued by a court of competent jurisdiction. The marketing company does not have access to any data related to network operations or user activity, so there is not much information that a court order could reveal.
6. P2P is allowed. We operate with net neutrality with the exception of restricting outgoing SMTP to prevent spammers from abusing the service.
7. Bitcoin, Credit/Debit Card, and PayPal. If complete payment anonymity is desired, we suggest using Bitcoin or a gift/disposable credit card. Methods such as PayPal or Credit/Debit card are connected to an account token so that future renewal payments can be properly processed and credited. We allow customers to edit their account information. With our US/Nevis operating structure, customer payment systems information is separate from network operations.
8. We recommend using the AES-256-CBC cipher with OpenVPN, which is used with our client. IPSec is available for native Apple device support and PPTP is offered for other legacy devices, but OpenVPN offers the best security and speed and is our recommended protocol
9. Our client disables IPv6 completely as part of our DNS and IP leak protection in our Windows and Mac OS X OctaneVPN clients. Our OpenVPN based client’s IP leak protection works by removing all routes except the VPN route from the device when the client has an active VPN connection. This a better option than a ‘kill switch’ because our client ensures the VPN is active before it allows any data to leave the device, whereas a ‘kill switch’ typically monitors the connection periodically, and, if it detects a drop in the VPN connection, reacts.
With a ‘kill switch’, data sent during the time between checks is potentially vulnerable to a dropped connection. Our system is proactive vs a reactive kill switch.
Customers should be vigilant as other software such as JavaScript, Flash, Java and WebRTC can leak IP independently of their VPN connection. Customers might want to consider creating a profile in their web browser specifically tailored toward web browsing privacy by disabling 3rd party plugins/extensions.
10. Yes, for Windows and Mac OS X. We support a number of protocols and software configurations.
11. In our more active gateway locations, we colocate. In locations with lower utilization, we normally host. All of our network infrastructure is set up so that each gateway boots, creates an encrypted RAM Disk, and authenticates with a central server before loading its configuration over our encrypted network remotely. The individual gateways only have a boot script – no data or config information is on the individual gateways. If we lost access to a gateway due to a third party action, the encrypted RAM Disk would vanish upon powering down.
12. We have gateways in 45 countries and 92 cities.
OctaneVPN website
PROXPN
1. We do not log any information about IP usage, in fact in most locations we NAT everything so it is not even possible to be able identify a requester and a user account and a source IP.
2. proXPN B.V. out of the Netherlands
3. We utilize a tracking cookie for affiliate sales that expires in 30 days. We use SendGrid for email which sends out the welcome and support emails, but email information is never shared with another 3rd party.
4. We respond and have internal processes that deal with these requests that do not include or disclose any customer information.
5. We keep no record of how users are mapped to IPs so we have nothing to give.
6. We don’t block, filter or throttle any BitTorrent or file-sharing traffic.
7. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, PayPal and Bitcoin.
8. We currently support IP SEC, OpenVPN and PPTP. IP SEC tends to be the fastest and most reliable, however as it is UDP some locations may restrict access. Open VPN over TCP is also reliable but slower than Open VPN over UDP.
9. We provide DNS leak protection. “VPN Guard” is a kill switch on our desktop application. We force ipv4, all interfaces to use VPN network so ipv6 doesn’t work. All dynamic routing is turned off to use static routing. Our Windows app also explicitly turns off ipv6 in Windows registry after VPN is connected.
10. Yes, we have clients for Windows XP and up, MacOS 10.6 and up, Linux Debian but also works on other flavors such as Ubuntu, and on mobile we support iOS and Android.
11. We run and maintain our own core servers and we also serve our own DNS.
12. USA, Canada, Costa Rica, UK, Iceland, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, China, Romania, Singapore, Australia, France and Japan.
proXPN website
HIDE.ME
hideme1. No, we don’t keep any logs. We have developed our system with an eye on our customers’ privacy, so we created a distributed VPN cluster with independent public nodes that do not store any customer data or logs at all. We have also been audited by one of the finest independent security experts, Leon Juranic, who has certified us to be completely log free.
2. Hide.me VPN is operated by eVenture Limited and based in Malaysia with no legal obligation to store any user logs at all.
3. Our landing pages, which are solely used for advertising purposes, include a limited amount of third-party tracking scripts, namely Google Analytics. However, no personal information that could be linked with VPN usage is shared with these providers. We do not send information that could compromise someone’s security over email.
4. Since we don’t store any logs and/or host copyright infringing material on our services, we’ll reply to these notices accordingly.
5. It has never happened but in such a scenario, we won’t be able to entertain the court orders because our infrastructure is built in a way that it does not store any logs and there is no way we could link any particular cyber activity to any particular user. In case we are forced to store user logs, we would prefer to close down rather than putting our users at risk who have put their trust in us.
6. There is no effective way of blocking file-sharing traffic without monitoring our customers which is against our principles and would be even illegal. Usually we only recommend our customers to avoid the US & UK locations for file-sharing but it is on a self-regulatory basis since these countries have strong anti-copyright laws in place.
7. We support over 200+ international payment methods, including Bitcoin, Paypal, Credit Cards, Bank transfer and UKash. All payments are handled by external payment providers and are linked to a temporary payment ID. This temporary payment ID can not be connected to the user’s VPN account/activity. After the payment is completed, the temporary payment ID will be permanently removed from the database.
8. After all, modern VPN protocols that we all support – like IKEv2, OpenVPN and SSTP, are considered secure even after the NSA leaks. We follow cryptographic standards and configured our VPN servers accordingly in order to support a secure key exchange with 8192-bit keys and a strong symmetric encryption (AES-256) for the data transfer.
9. Our users’ privacy is of utmost concern to us. Our Windows client has the features such as kill switch, Auto Connect, Auto Reconnect etc which makes sure that the user is always encrypted and anonymous. Even if one of our customers decides not to use the client, in our community there is a big variety of tutorials to help our customers to protect themselves against any sort of leaks.
Above all, we have put in some additional layers of security which include default protection against IP and DNS leaks. To ensure IP leak protection, as soon as the VPN connection is established, our application deletes the default gateway of the user’s’ Internet Connection so their local network becomes inaccessible. In such an instance you enforce the VPN usage adding another layer of security making IP leaks impossible and that’s not it.
Our Windows app also blocks outgoing IPv6 connections automatically to prevent IP leaks. It won’t affect a user’s overall Internet connectivity if your ISP assigns you an IPv6 address.
10. We have our own VPN application for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS
11. We operate our own non-logging DNS-servers to protect our customers from DNS hijacking and similar attacks. We operate 32 server locations in 27 different countries. However we do not own physical hardware, there is an intrusion detection and other various security measures in place to ensure the integrity and security of all our single servers.
We choose all third party hosting providers very carefully, so we can assure that there are certain security standards in place (ISO 27001) and no unauthorized person could access our servers. Among our reputable partners are Leaseweb, NFOrce, Equinix and Softlayer.
12. Our servers are located in countries all over the world, among the most popular ones are Canada, Netherlands, Singapore, Germany, Brazil, Mexico and Australia. Below is the complete list of countries, alternatively you can view all available locations here.
Hide.me website
AIRVPN
airvpn1. No, we don’t.
2. It is “AIR” and it is registered in Italy.
3. No, absolutely not.
4. They are ignored.
5. No court order or magistrate decree has ever been issued to disclose the identity of any of our customers, but we will of course do our best to comply with a valid and jurisdictionally competent magistrate decree or order. However, it must also be said that we can not provide information that we don’t have. Up to now, no personal information has ever been given away, while data about traffic is not even kept by us (we do not inspect, log or monitor traffic in any case).
6. Yes, it’s allowed on every and each server. We do not discriminate against any protocol. Our infrastructure is totally agnostic and we do not even monitor traffic to see which protocols are being used.
7. We accept Bitcoin, a wide range of cryptocurrencies, PayPal and major credit cards. About PayPal and credit cards, the usual information pertaining to the transaction and account/credit card holder are retained by the financial institutions, and it is possible to correlate a payment to a user (which is good for refund purposes when required).
When this is unacceptable for security reasons, then Bitcoin or some other cryptocoin should be used. Bitcoin is not anonymous by itself, but it can be provided with a rather good anonymity layer simply by running the Bitcoin client behind Tor. On top of that we also accept some cryptocurrency which offers intrinsically and by default a strong anonymity layer protecting the transactions.
8. We would recommend our setup which includes Perfect Forward Secrecy, 4096 bit RSA keys, 4096 bit Diffie-Hellman keys and authentication on both sides not based on username/password. In general, we would also recommend to be cautious and get well documented before jumping to ECC. Our service setup, based on OpenVPN, is the following:
DATA CHANNEL CIPHERS
AES-256-CBC with HMAC-SHA1 for authentication
CONTROL CHANNEL CIPHERS
AES-256-GCM with HMAC-SHA384 for authentication
AES-256-CBC with HMAC-SHA1 for authentication
4096 bit Diffie-Hellman keys size
TLS Ciphers (IANA names): TLS-DHE-RSA-WITH-AES-256-CBC-SHA, TLS-DHE-RSA-WITH-AES-256-GCM-SHA384
TLS additional authorization layer key: 2048 bit
Perfect Forward Secrecy through Diffie-Hellman key exchange DHE. After the initial key negotiation, re-keying is performed every 60 minutes (this value can be lowered unilaterally by the client)
9 and 10) Our free and open source software “Eddie” (released under GPLv3) for GNU/Linux, Windows, OS X and MacOS, implements features which prevent the typical DNS leaks in Windows and any other leak (for example in case of unexpected VPN disconnection). Leaks prevention, called “Network Lock”, is not a trivial kill-switch, but it prevents various leaks that a classical kill switch can’t block: leaks caused by WebRTC, by programs binding to all interfaces on a misconfigured system and by malevolent software which tries to determine the “real” IP address.
We block outbound IPv6 packets at the moment on client side (a solution preferred over disabling IPv6, which remains anyway an optional feature). In 2016 we planned IPv6 support for half or late 2017 and at the moment we are fine with this deadline.
We provide guides, based on firewalls and not, to prevent leaks on various systems for all those persons who can’t or don’t wish to use our client software Eddie.
11. Our servers are housed in data centers which we have physical access to, provided that the access is arranged well in advance for security reasons. Access to servers is also guaranteed to the data center technicians, for any need of on-site support.
12. We have servers located in several countries. We offer a public real-time servers monitor in one of our web pages which provides a lot of information (including location, of course) for each server.
AirVPN website
HIDEIPVPN
hideipvpn1. We store no logs related to any IP address. There is no way for any third-party to match user IP to any specific activity in the internet.
2. Registered name of the company is Server Management LLC and we operate under US jurisdiction.
3. We use live chat provided by WHMCS and Google Apps for incoming email. For outgoing email we use our own SMTP server.
4. Since no information is stored on any of our servers there is nothing that we can take down. We reply to the data center or copyright holder that we do not log our users’ traffic and we use shared IP-addresses, which make it impossible to track who downloaded/uploaded any data from the internet using our VPN.
5. HideIPVPN may disclose information, including but not limited to, information concerning a client, a transmission made using our network, or a website, in order to comply with a court order, subpoena, summons, discovery request, warrant, statute, regulation, or governmental request. But due to the fact that we have a no-logs policy and we use Shared IPs there won’t be anything to disclose. This has never happened so far.
6. This type of traffic is welcomed on our German (DE VPN) and Dutch (NL VPN) servers. It is not allowed on US, UK, Canada, Poland and French servers as stated in our TOS – the reason for this is our agreements with data centers. We also have a specific VPN plan for torrents.
7. HideIPVPN accepts following methods: PayPal, Bitcoin, Credit & Debit cards.
8. SoftEther VPN protocol. Users can currently use our VPN applications on Windows and OSX systems. Both versions have a “kill switch” feature in case connection drops. Our apps can re-establish VPN connection and once active restart closed applications. Also, the app has the option to enable DNS leak protection.
9. Our VPN servers have been checked against those issues. Users were warned about DNS leak danger. Our free VPN app has both kill switch and DNS protection leak options for our clients to use. When customers are using our software we disable IPv6 through the VPN connection. For now we are working to re-route IPv6 traffic via VPN over OpenVPN and SoftEther.
10. Yes, we recommend to our customers to use our free VPN application for an easier, faster and better connection. It works with Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android.
11. We don’t have physical control of our VPN servers. Servers are outsourced in premium data centers with high-quality tier1 networks. For our VPN we use Google DNS servers and for Smart DNS we use our own DNS servers.
12. At the moment we have 29 servers located in 7 countries – US, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Poland and France.
HideIPVPN website
VPN LAND
1. We can’t match a VPN IP-address and timestamp to a specific user or his or her IP-address. We do not watch what our users do online, neither record their Internet activities. For billing purposes, order IP addresses of users are stored permanently.
2. VPNLand Inc. Registered in Toronto, Canada.
3. Yes we use several third party vendors, such as Zopim for online chat messages and Picreel for promotional purposes.
4. In most cases DMCA emails are ignored. We had to block non-common ports on our USA servers, so no DMCA emails coming against our US VPN Servers.
5. It hasn’t happened. In case if it happens we’ll definitely analyze it and take proper actions.
6. P2P traffic is blocked on our USA servers, other jurisdictions are OK for p2p. All traffic is treated equally.
7. PayPal, Credit cards, webmoney, Paymentwall, Bluesnap. We use WHMCS for billing/support (see also question 1).
8. OpenVPN – 256bit.
9. IPv6 traffic is filtered. Unfortunately no “kill-switch” feature at the moment.
10. Yes. Windows. Mobile app is currently under development.
11. We own some of the servers in Toronto. Other countries are rented servers.
12. See here.
VPN Land website
VPN.HT
1. We do not keep such data (logs).
2. VPN.ht Limited is incorporated in Hong Kong
3. Google Analytics. We are switching this to PIWIK
4. We do not handle DMCA notices, our data center partners do, and in all cases we do not keep logs so we cannot identify the customer.
5. We will stop updating our Warrant Canary.
6. All Protocol are allowed in all our locations.
7. We accept various payment methods: Credit card / PayPal / Bitcoin / Other national Payments. All are linked by an email.
8. For general use 128bit AES, but we do offer 256bit AES as Maximum encryption level.
9. We are currently deploying our Ipv6 network across our servers. We provide all our VPN users with a private log-less DNS server. Our application also offers various features such as a Kill switch.
10. Our application is open-source and can be found on github.com/vpnht. Currently, we are offering custom applications for Windows / Mac / Android / iOS.
11. We don’t, but we do have a strong relationship with our partners who operate data centers.
12. We have 127 servers in around 33 countries and we try our best to expand to locations most requested by our customers.
VPN.ht website
OVPN
ovpn1. Our entire infrastructure and VPN service is built to ensure that no logs can be stored – anywhere. Our servers are locked in cabinets and operate without any hard drives. We use a tailored version of Debian, which doesn’t support SATA controllers, USB ports etc. To further increase security, we use TRESOR and grsecurity to be resistant to cold boot attacks.
2. OVPN Integritet AB (Org no. 556999-4469). We operate under Swedish jurisdiction.
3. For website insights, we use Piwik, an Open Source solution that we host ourselves. The last two bytes of visitors’ IP addresses are anonymized; hence no individual users can be identified. For support, we use an internally built system.
The mail server is hosted by Glesys, a trusted provider in Sweden. Automatic emails from the website are sent using Mailgun, but we never send any sensitive information via email. Zopim is used for live chat, which we will eventually migrate from when we’ve built a satisfactory in-house solution.
4. Since we don’t store any content, such requests aren’t applicable to us.
5. No court orders have ever been received. However, the police have contacted us numerous times regarding whom had a specific IP address at a particular time. Due to the reasons mentioned in #1, we can’t provide them with any answers.
We published an open letter to the Swedish police to disclose that we are unable to provide any user information they request. We also have an insurance that covers trial expenses enabling us to take any requests to court in case an agency doubts our truthfulness.
6. Yes.
7. Bitcoin, Braintree for credit cards, PayPal & cash payments via postal mail. There’s a connection between payments and accounts, which is required in order to know who bought what. We recommend all users to pay anonymously.
8. We only provide OpenVPN and utilize AES-256-CBC, and a 2048-bit Diffie–Hellman key along with a 1024-bit TLS key to ensure that the key exchange can be done safely during the authentication phase.
9. We tunnel both IPv4 and IPv6 and therefore no leaks should happen. Our custom client has DNS leak protection as well as a killswitch to ensure our users safety.
10. Yes, we offer a custom VPN client for Windows, OS X and Ubuntu. We’ve also developed and manufactured a router with extensive functionality and security precautions, named OVPNbox.
11. Yes – we own all the servers used to operate OVPN. Our servers are locked in separate cabinets in each data center. However, using physical force one could break open the cabinets and therefore get physical access to our servers. To mitigate these extreme scenarios we have focused immensely on the physical security of our servers. Someone can literally be standing right next to our servers and will still fail to extract any data.
More information on OVPN’s physical security is available here.
12. Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.
OVPN website
PERFECT PRIVACY
pplogovpn1. We do not log or store any traffic, IP addresses, or any other kind of data that would allow identification of our users or their activities. The anonymity and privacy of our users are our highest priority, and the Perfect Privacy infrastructure was built with this in mind.
2. Perfect Privacy is registered in Zug, Switzerland.
3. All email and support tools are developed and hosted in-house under our control. We do use Google Analytics for website optimization and better market reach, but with the anonymizeIp parameter set. However, Perfect Privacy users are exempted from any tracking by Google Analytics and are also able to use our TrackStop filter which will block any tracking (as well as ads and known malware domains) directly on our servers.
4. Because we do not host any data, DMCA notices do not directly affect us. However, we do receive copyright violation notices for filesharing in which case we truthfully reply that we have no data that would allow us to identify the party responsibly.
5. The only step on our side is to inform the contacting party that we do not have any data that would allow the identification of a user. There had been incidents in the past where Perfect Privacy servers have been seized but never was any user information compromised that way. Since no logs are stored in the first place and additionally all our services are running within ramdisks, a server seizure will never compromise our customers.
6. Yes, Bittorrent and other file-sharing is generally allowed and treated equally to other traffic. However, at certain locations that are known to treat copyright violations rather harshly (very quick termination of servers), we block the most popular torrent trackers to reduce the impact of this problem. Currently this is the case for servers located in the United States and France.
7. We offer a variety of payment options ranging from anonymous methods such as sending cash, or Bitcoin. However, we also offer payment with PayPal and credit cards for users who prefer these options. We keep no data about the payment except for when the payment was received which is linked only to an anonymous account number.
8. While we offer a range of connection possibilities we would recommend using OpenVPN with 256 bit AES encryption. Additional security can be established by using a cascaded connection: The Perfect Privacy VPN Manager allows to cascade your OpenVPN connection over up to four freely choosable servers.
9. Perfect Privacy provides full IPv6 support (meaning you will get an IPv6 address even if your ISP does not offer IPv6) and as such it is fully integrated in the firewall protection. The “Kill Switch” is activated by default and will prevent any IP and DNS leaks for both IPv4 and IPv6.
10. Yes, we offer custom clients for Windows, Linux, MacOS X and Android at the moment. At the time of this article, the Linux, Mac and Android clients are still in open beta. More functionality will be added to these clients in the near future.
11. Our VPN servers run in various data centers around the world. While we have no physical access to the servers, they all are running within RAM disks only and are fully encrypted.
12. We offer servers in 23 countries. For full details about all servers locations please check our server status site as we are constantly adding new servers.
Perfect Privacy website
TORRENTPRIVACY
1. No. We don’t keep logs of our user’s activity.
2. Registered name is TorrentPrivacy and we operate under Hong Kong jurisdiction.
3. We don’t use any external services.
4. We inform companies that we don’t keep any information on our servers.
5. That never happened before. If that case will ever occur, we will inform authorities that we don’t keep any logs of our users.
6. Our primary focus is torrent and file-sharing traffic. We treat file-sharing traffic like any other traffic.
7. We use PayPal, CC and Bitcoin. It’s up to our users how to set up their payment methods.
8. With TorrentPrivacy you get a full spectrum of security measures to protect your data. You can choose what is right for you from these protocols: OpenVPN, PPTP, L2TP/IPSec. A choice is always good but by all means, OpenVPN wins pretty much in every way possible if you compare it with other options, except situations when privacy is your main concern, and you don’t really care about speed. And if that was not enough more encryption protocols are available. SHA-256 and AES-256.
9. No DNS leaks were registered by any of our users. When the connection drops for some reason, all downloads stop, so no information is exposed.
10. Yes, we have a custom VPN app for Mac and Windows.
11. We own servers that we use. Because of that number of countries to connect is limited.
12. Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, France and Bulgaria.
TorrentPrivacy website
IVACY
1. Ivacy believes in anonymity and therefore we do not maintain user activity logs.
We only keep track of login attempts because we allow 5 multiple/simultaneous connections with one VPN account. We come across encrypted credentials in this process. The process is fully automated and we keep this info till the user is connected. It is automatically deleted as soon as user disconnects from our server. Since we don’t come across any personal IP address in this process, we can’t map any connection to any IP address.
2. Ivacy is registered under PMG Private Limited. Our headquarter is based in Singapore; one of the few nations without mandatory data retention laws. Working out of the region allows us to further ensure the anonymity of our users- something we hold very dear. At the present moment in time, there seems to be no legal hindrance or government intervention that could harm our reasoning behind working out of Singapore.
3. We use Aweber for sending emails to our customers, and our live chat services are managed by Livechatinc’s platform.
4. We cannot relate any specific activity with any specific user, since we don’t keep any logs or records. Moreover, working from Singapore, one of the few nations without mandatory data retention laws, allows us to further ensure the anonymity of our users. We have not come across such an event, but if we do receive any legal notice, we cannot do anything more than to ignore it simply because they have no legal binding to us. Since we are based in Singapore, all legal notices have to be dealt with according to Singapore laws first.
5. Again, such a scenario has not presented itself yet. We do not log any traffic or session data so we cannot identify and connect a specific activity with a particular user of our service.
6. We are proud to mention here that we allow P2P traffic on many of our marked servers including servers in UK, USA and Canada.
7. We accept payment through major credit cards, BitCoin, PayPal, Webmoney and Perfect Money. Apart from the aforementioned payment methods, we also accept more than 120 region based payments through PaymentWall. When a customer places an order, we immediately send a payment confirmation email to let him know that he has placed an order successfully. Then our merchant takes over and verifies the information given by the customer and lets us know whether to deliver the order or not. This process normally takes typically from 5 – 60 minutes.
8. We offer and recommend 256 bit encryption in addition to SSL based protocols (i.e. SSTP and OpenVPN). We offer our own DNS servers, an “Internet Kill Switch” and Split Tunneling features.
9. We have IPv6 Leak Protection feature in our Apps. Customers can enable it via settings; and we highly recommend them to do so. We provide DNS leak protection by providing our own DNS servers. We also have Internet Kill Switch in our Windows and Android apps. Soon we are launching same for Mac and iOS devices.
10. Yes, we offer custom VPN applications to our users. These include VPN Apps for Windows, Android, Mac and iOS. We also have a dedicated VPN addon for Kodi running on OpenELEC based devices and Raspberry Pi.
11. We physically control some of our server locations where we have a heavier load. Other locations are hosted with third parties until we have enough traffic in that location to justify racking our own server setup. We host with multiple providers in each location. We have server locations in more than forty countries. In all cases, our network nodes load over our encrypted network. Anyone taking control of the server would have no usable data on the disk. Yes, we have our own DNS servers.
12. We have servers located in more than 40 countries. You can find the complete list of servers here.
Ivacy website
CYBERSILENT
1. We DON’T keep any logs that could be used to identify an IP address or/and timestamp of CyberSilent user. We only ask Name and Surname on registration process but we are not going to verify it.
2. CyberSilent, Poland
3. We use marketing tools like Google Analystics for marketing purpose and improving customer experience.
4. Because we don’t keep any data, we can not respond to them.
5. We have a no-log policy, so we can’t identify the user.
6. It is allowed only on servers in countries like Russia, Romania, Netherlands or Lithuania.
7. We accept a large number of differents payment methods: Paypal, CreditCards, Alipay and Crypto Currency(Bitcoin and other). Local payments are liked only if they have recurring subscriptions.
8. We recommend OpenVpn and Cisco SSL that offer military grade encryption AES-256
9. Yes IPv6 is allowed and there are no Ipv6 leaks with Cisco SSL and Openvpn. We are implementing kill switches on all our apps.
10. Yes, we offer applications for Windows, MacOSX, iOS and Android.
11. Because we offer from more than 50 countries we do not have physical access, but they are hosted on trusted data centers.
12. You can find all countries here.
CyberSilent website
WHATTHESERVER
1. Our OpenVPN servers are configured with “verb 0” so that they keep no logs at all. Our SOCKS Proxy servers do keep authentication logs which include the IP address, but these logs are cleared every 6 hours. We have a session management system that tracks which users are logged into which servers, however that system operates on real-time data and does not log events.
2. What The * Services, LLC is incorporated in the USA.
3. We use Google Analytics on our website for visitors.
4. We respond saying that we are a VPS/VPN provider and that we do not have the logs requested nor any other logs about our customers usage of our service.
5. We have not yet received such a court order or subpoena for user information. However, if we do in the future, we will take several steps. First, we would consult with our lawyers to confirm the validity of the order/subpoena, and respond accordingly if it is NOT a valid order/subpoena. Then we would alert our user of the event if we are legally able to.
If the order/subpoena is valid, we would see if we have the ability to provide the information requested, and respond accordingly we do NOT have the information requested. If we DO have the information requested, we would immediately reconfigure our systems to stop keeping that information. Then we would consult with our lawyer to determine if there is anyway we can fight the order/subpoena and/or what is the minimum level of compliance we must meet.
6. BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic is allowed on all VPN/Proxy servers which are NOT located in the USA.
7. Our payment options include PayPal, Bit-Pay (bitcoin), PerfectMoney, and Coinbase (bitcoin). When a user selects a payment method our system will remember that payment method and link it to their account. For this reason, we suggest that our users do not put in their real name & contact information, and that they should pay us anonymously via Bitcoin.
8. All of our OpenVPN and SOCKS Proxy servers are running OpenBSD and are using LibreSSL instead of OpenSSL. This protects our servers from a wide range of attacks on the encryption.
Our OpenVPN Servers use AES-256-CBC & SHA512 HMAC for the Data Channel, and DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 on the Control Channel. Our OpenVPN Servers are also configured with 4096bit RSA keys and a custom 4096bit Diffie-Hellman parameters. Our SOCKS Proxy is based on OpenSSH, so they support any ciphers the client wants to use. With OpenSSH, the Client decides what cipher to use instead of the Server.
We push routes to our OpenVPN Clients which instruct them to route all IP traffic which is not destined for their local network to be routed through the VPN. This includes DNS traffic. We push OpenVPN Client configuration files which include “resolv-retry infinite” and “perstist-tun”, which when combined should prevent the Client from sending traffic in-the-clear unless the user manually kills the OpenVPN connection.
Furthermore, all of our OpenVPN and SOCKS Proxy servers are full IPv4/IPv6 Dual-Stack and we push a default route for both IPv4 and IPv6 to our clients. This is critical because if your home ISP gives you an IPv6 address, your computer will use IPv6 instead of IPv4. You will leak a significant amount of traffic if we did not push you a default route for IPv6.
9. We do not offer DNS leak protection via kill switches.
10. We do not offer a custom VPN application. Instead, we instruct our users to install an OpenVPN client of their choice from a trusted source i.e. openvpn.net.
11. All of our infrastructure is hosted in 3rd party colocations. However, we use full-disk-encryption on all of our servers.
12. We have servers in the USA, Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden.
WhatTheServer website
HEADVPN
1. We DO NOT keep any logs. We do not store logs relating to traffic, session, DNS or metadata.
2. We’re registered in the United Kingdom under the name “HEADVPN LTD”
3. We are using Live chat provided by Tawk.to and Google Apps for incoming email. We use Google Analytics and a WHMCS ticket tool.
4. Since we don’t keep any information on any of our servers there is nothing that we can take down. If we receive a valid DMCA notice we can only take action if the connection is still active (we notify the user and stop the session).
5. We haven’t received any court orders. If that happens, the agency will be informed that no user information is available as we DO NOT keep logs.
6. For P2P/Bittorent traffic we have special VPN servers (which are located in a data center that allows such traffic). On other VPN servers, P2P/Bittorent traffic is blocked.
7. We accept all forms of Credit/Debit cards payments through the Stripe payment gateway and PayPal payment method. We do not store any billing information such as credit cards or addresses.
8. We provide all kinds of encryption methods, including PPTP, L2TP/IPsec, SSTP, OpenVPN and SoftEther protocols. We recommend using OpenVPN protocol as it’s the most secure and using RSA 4096 bit and AES 256 bit encryption keys.
9. DNS leak protection is best handled by using OpenVPN protocol (AES-256-CBC algorithm for encryption).
10. For the time being we do not provide a custom tool (in progress).
11. All our VPN servers are hosted in 3rd party data centers with the highest specifications for performance, reliability and security. We have direct access to each server and they all are running within RAM disks (which are fully encrypted).
12. Our VPN servers are located in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany and Netherlands.
HeadVPN website
PUREVPN
1. PureVPN believes in anonymity and therefore we do not maintain user activity logs. To better our services and enhance usability of our software, we only monitor access attempts to our server and this is done only for security and troubleshooting purposes.
2. The registered company name is GZ Systems Ltd. We are headquartered in Hong Kong; one of the few nations without mandatory data retention laws.
3. PureVPN does not store any personally identifiable information. 3rd party tools, such as Google analytics, are only used for the purpose of marketing and for improving customer experience.
4. We take DMCA notices quite seriously and encourage our users to comply with necessary guidelines to avoid such notifications. Actions taken cannot be broadly stated. They are dealt with on a case by case basis.
5. Such a scenario has not occurred yet. If it does occur, we will act in the best interest of the user and the law.
6. File-sharing is allowed on some servers. We uphold regional copyright laws and closely monitor changing policies on the matter and is thus subject to change. You can always refer to our customer support for details on which servers allow file-sharing.
7. We accept payment through major credit cards, BitCoin, PayPal, AliPay, Webmoney, Yandex, Ukash, CashU, Giropay, Necard, Mercado Pago, MyCard Wallet and more.
When you place an order, we immediately send a payment confirmation email to let you know that you have placed an order successfully. Then our merchant takes over and verifies the information given by you and lets us know whether to deliver the order or not. This process normally takes typically from 5 – 60 minutes or so. We do not come across anyone’s IP address in the process.
8. We offer and recommend 256 bit encryption in addition to SSL-based protocols (i.e. SSTP and OpenVPN). We offer our own DNS servers, an “Internet Kill Switch” and Split Tunneling features. As far as incoming traffic is concerned, we offer NAT Firewall, Web Protection and a Stealth VPN feature allowing you to browse websites via virtual browsers eliminating cookie usage.
9. We provide IPv6 leak protection including DNS leak protection and internet kill switch as standard features to our clients.
10. We offer custom VPN applications for multiple platforms including but not limited to Windows, Mac , IOS , Android. PureVPN is also compatible with routers, gaming consoles, BoxeeBox, Roku, Apple TV, Android TV and 20+ other OS and devices.
11. PureVPN provides one of the largest networks. We have servers in 100+ countries. An infrastructure of such magnitude would be rather difficult to maintain and thus we have agreements with Data centers throughout the world. These Data centers are bound by contract and thus cannot interfere with our data without our instruction.
12. We have more than 750+ servers. They are based in 5 continents which makes us spread over the world.
PureVPN website
PROXY.SH
proxy1. We do not keep any logs whatsoever. We even have an anonymous token-based authenticating system.
2. We are a not-for-profit unit part of offshore-based digital incubator Three Monkeys International Inc. It operates from the Republic of Seychelles.
3. We use Google Translate & Google Maps across some of our web app’s elements for UX gains. These can be turned off with a JavaScript blocker. We also use Mandrill for a reliable email delivery, but users may still subscribe to our services with a non-working or disposable e-mail address.
Everything else, from support to billing, is organised in-house. We do not use any CRM, and we do not have any advertising or marketing channel. We only rely on word-of-mouth.
4. We immediately block the affected port on the related node, and then we publish the notice to both our Transparency Report and our Twitter account. In the event we are restricted from releasing it, we make use of our warrant canary.
5. We respond that we are unable to identify any of our users, but that our premises are open for inspection by any forensic expert. We also inform our members through Twitter and our transparency report about the situation. In case we are unable to speak, we make use of our warrant canary and warn our users that we updated the latter. Finally, we make sure to drop the VPN node as soon as it is possible. This has happened once.
6. Absolutely. We do not discriminate any traffic type.
7. We accept more than 100 various payment methods & crypto-currencies. Our gateways are G2A, SafeCharge, Paymentwall, Okpay, Blockchain and eDigiCash. There is no recurring subscription, and all billing information is processed by the gateways: the only information we retain is a transaction ID and the e-mail address of the user account.
8. For maximum stealth, we recommend our RSA 4096-bit + TOR’s obfsproxy (obfs4) integration. And for encryption strength, we recommend ECC + XOR (secp384r1). Both are available directly within our custom-made, open-sourced OpenVPN client.
9. Safejumper, our open-sourced OpenVPN client, gives you protection against both DNS and IPv6 leaks. It also comes with a robust “kill switch” that literary kills the network interface if the connection drops. Our various web apps also test other potential leaks such as GPS or WebRTC and teach you how to fix them. We also have an extended literature to help you fix any leaks (DNS, IPv6, torrent, etc.) manually.
10. Safejumper, our custom-built OpenVPN client, is made fully open source on Github, and it is available on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS.
11. Of course, we run our own OpenNIC-compliant DNS servers. Also, we use our own physical servers in friendly data centers for our core services and our biggest VPN nodes. Our VPN network is also supplemented with a variety of bare-metal dedicated servers or virtual private servers across the world.
12. We provide VPN nodes in 57 countries, across more than 300 locations.
Proxy.sh website
VPN SECURE
vpns1. We do not keep any logs.
2. VPNSecure Trust. Australia.
3. Google Analytics / Zendesk chat. Email servers and support system is hosted in-house.
4. We do not keep information on our users and are unable to identify the user belonging to the notice.
5. We provide the information we can correlate from the court order, which is zero. Because we do not log the information pointing to an IP address of our servers, it does not denote a specific user. Users are provided shared IPs so traffic is mixed between them.
6. We allo P2P. Previously P2P was not allowed on *some* servers, however we have migrated away from these locations.
7. Bitcoin / Perfect Money / PayPal / Credit Card / PaymentWall, if we need to look at a payment we receive this information by asking the customer to determine which payment is theirs.
8. We have multiple cipher options, AES-256-CBC & 2048bit encrypted unique keys per user account along with our Stealth VPN option.
9. We block IPv6 in multiple places, DNS servers do not respond to IPv6 records along with blocking at the OS level. We also provide UDP blocking which protects P2P users. DNS Leak fix is on by default.
10. Yes, we have our own OpenVPN application for Linux / Windows / MacOS X / Android / iPhone.
11. The main infrastructure is colocated and owed by VPNSecure, remote endpoints are leased servers, these are configured with encrypted folders meaning any third-party that tried to access the server would be unable to access any VPN specific information. VPNSecure looks after all infrastructure and VPN endpoints internally, we do not out-source this.
12. 47+ Countries
VPN Secure website
SECUREVPN.TO
SecureVPNto1. We don’t log any individually identifying information. The privacy of our customers is our top priority. Our service has been awarded with the first and up to now the only “Privacy badge” by an independent review of That One Privacy Guy.
2. Our service is operated by a group of autonomous privacy activists outside of “Fourteen Eyes” or “Enemy of the Internet” countries. Each server is handled with the jurisdiction at the server’s location.
3. Our website has been developed by ourselves and we don’t use any external service providers.
4. We reply to takedown notices, but can’t be forced to hand out information because of our non-logging policy.
5. This hasn’t happened yet, but if we were forced to identify any of our customers at a specific server location, we would drop this location immediately. Under no circumstances are we going to log, monitor or share any information about our customers.
6. Yes, it is allowed and treated equally on all servers.
7. We offer a wide range of anonymous payment methods like Bitcoin, Dash, Ethereum, Paysafecard and Perfect Money. No external payment processor receives any information because all payments are processed by our own payment interface.
8. We would recommend OpenVPN, available in UDP and TCP mode. We are using AES-256-GCM (OpenVPN 2.4.*) / AES-256-CBC (OpenVPN 2.3.*) for traffic encryption, 4096 bit RSA keys for the key exchange and SHA-512 as HMAC. These settings offer you the highest grade of security available.
9. We fully support IPv6 internet connections. Our homemade VPN Client provides advanced security features like a Kill Switch, DNS Leak Protection, IP Leak Protection, IPv6 Leak Protection, WebRTC Leak Protection and many more.
10. Our VPN Client is available for Windows and doesn’t store any logs. We plan to offer a version for Linux, Mac and mobile devices.
11. We rent 35 servers in 25 countries and are continuously expanding our server park. It is impossible to have physical control over all widespread servers, but we have taken security measures to prevent unintended server access. At the moment we are using excellent anycast nameservers of UltraDNS.
12. You can find our server list under the following link.
SecureVPN.to website
IBVPN
ibvpn1. We do not spy on our users and we don’t monitor their Internet usage. We do not keep logs with our users’ activity.
2. Company’s registered name is Amplusnet SRL. We are located in Romania, which means we are under EU jurisdiction.
3. For the presentation part of our web site (the front end) we are using Google Analytics & Google Translate and CDN. Occasionally we are running A/B tests and promotional campaigns that might involve using third party tools like optimizely / Omniconvert / picreel.
For the secure part of our web site (the back end) we do not use external e-mail providers (we host our own mail server) and we host a dedicated WHMCS installation for billing and support tickets.
To provide quick support and a user-friendly service experience, our users can contact us via live chat (Zopim) but activity logs are deleted on a daily basis. There is no way to associate any information provided via live chat with the users’ account.
4. So far we have not received any DMCA notices for any P2P server from our server list. That is normal considering that the servers are located in DMCA-free zones. Before we allow our clients to use a P2P server we test it for several months in order to make sure that the speeds are fine and we do not receive any complaints from the server provider. For the rest of the servers, P2P and file sharing activities are not allowed/supported.
5. So far, we have not received any valid court orders. As stated in our TOS, we do not support criminal activities, and in case of a valid court order we must comply with the EU law under which we operate.
6. We allow BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic on specific servers located in Netherlands, Luxembourg, Canada, Sweden, Russia, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Ukraine. Based on our legal research, we consider that it is NOT safe for our users to allow such activities on servers located, for example, in the United States or United Kingdom.
7. We accept various payment methods like Credit cards, PayPal, prepaid credit cards, Payza, SMS, iDeal, OOOPay and many more. Payments are performed exclusively by third party processors, thus no credit card info, PayPal ids or other identification info are stored in our database. For those who would like to keep a low profile, we accept BitCoin, LiteCoin, WebMoney, Perfect Money etc.
8. The most secure VPN connection is Open VPN, which provides 256 bit Blowfish algorithm encryption. We also support SSTP and SoftEther on most of the servers.
9. A Kill Switch has been implemented with our VPN Clients. When enabled, the Kill Switch closes all applications (that are running and have been added to the Kill Switch app list) in case of an unwanted VPN disconnection. Our latest applications allow customers to disable IPv6 Traffic, to make sure that only our DNS servers are used while connected to the VPN and there is an option that filter the DNS requests by using the firewall – to avoid leaks.
10. We currently provide custom VPN apps for Windows, Android, iOS and Mac OS X. We also offer browser extensions (cross-platform) for Chrome and Firefox that are able to route the HTTP and HTTPS requests.
11. We do not have physical control over our VPN servers, but we have full control to them and all servers are entirely managed personally by our technical staff. Admin access to servers is not provided for any third party.
12. Our servers are located in dozens of countries. A full list is available here.
ibVPN website
TRUST.ZONE
trustzone 1. Trust.Zone doesn’t store any logs. All we need from users is just an email to sign up. No names, no personal info, no tracking, no logs.
2. Trust.Zone is under Seychelles jurisdiction and we operate according to law in Seychelles. There is no mandatory data retention law in Seychelles. In our jurisdiction a court order would not be enforceable and since we don’t store any logs , there is nothing to be taken from our servers. The company is operated by Extra Solutions Ltd.
3. Trust.Zone does not use any third-party support tools, tracking systems like Google Analytics or live chats that hold user information.
4. If we receive any type of DMCA requests or Copyright Infringement Notices – we ignore them. Why? Trust.Zone is under Seychelles offshore jurisdiction. There is no mandatory data retention law in Seychelles. The laws of Seychelles are very friendly to Internet users. Under Seychelles jurisdiction a court order would not be enforceable and since we don’t store any logs, there is nothing to be had from our servers.
5. A court order would not be enforceable because we do not log information and therefore there is nothing to be had from our servers. Trust.Zone is a VPN provider with a Warrant Canary. Trust.Zone has not received or has been subject to any searches, seizures of data or requirements to log any actions of our customers.
6. We don’t restrict any kind of traffic. Trust.Zone does not throttle or block any protocols, IP addresses, servers or any type of traffic whatsoever. Trust.Zone is recommended to use as the “best vpn for torrenting” by the biggest Bittorent websites in the world – ExtraTorrrent (#2 – according to TorrentFreak), 1337x.to (#6) and TORRENTZ2 (#5 – according to TorrentFreak).
7. All major credit cards are accepted. Besides, Bitcoin, PayPal, Webmoney, Alipay, wire transfer and many other types of payments are available. To stay completely anonymous, we highly recommend using anonymous payments via Bitcoin. Trust.Zone offers 10% OFF for everyone who pays with Bitcoin.
No logs, no names, offshore jurisdiction, and anonymous payments – we’re trying to do all the best for our users to get their freedom on the Internet back.
8. Trust.Zone uses the highest level of data encryption. We use a protocol which is faster than OpenVPN and also includes Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS). The most unique feature of Trust.Zone VPN is that you can forward your VPN traffic via ports – 21 (SCP, SFTP), 22 (FTP), 80 (HTTP), 443 (HTTPS) or 1194 (OpenVPN), most of which can’t be blocked by your ISP. Trust.Zone uses AES-256 Encryption by default. We also offer L2TP over IPsec which also uses 256bit AES Encryption.
9. Trust.Zone offers a kill-switch. Trust.Zone has no support for IPv6 connections to avoid any leaks. We also provide users with additional recommendations to be sure that there are no any DNS or IP leaks.
10. Trust.Zone provides users with one-click, easy-to-use application for Windows. Trust.Zone supports all major OS and devices – Windows, iOS, Android, Linux, Windows Mobile, Mac, DD-WRT routers and other OpenVPN compatible devices.
11. We have a mixed infrastructure. Trust.Zone owns some physical servers and we have access to them physically. In locations with lower utilization, we normally host with third parties. But the most important point is that we use dedicated servers in this case only, with full control by our network administrators. DNS queries go through our own DNS servers. We also may use Google DNS depending on platform.
12. We are operating with 100+ servers in 30+ countries and still growing. The full map of the server locations is available here.
Trust.Zone website
DOUBLEHOP
doublehop1. Zero, zip, zilch, nada. For realsies, /dev/null 2>&1. We have nothing to share with authorities, even if we felt compelled to.
2. We’re incorporated as Doublehop GmbH in the Seychelles. We operate as Doublehop.me, Doublehop, and Doublehop VPN.
3. We do not use any external visitor tracking services such as AdSense. We use Mandrill to deliver email automatically when orders are placed. In the interest of full disclosure, please be advised that Mandrill provides analytical statistics relating to email (e.g., open rates and clicks). We disable these features unless we are doing web development and need to quickly confirm that changes do not impact email delivery.
We also permit registration via Telegram Messenger as a more secure alternative to email. A Telegram message is automatically sent to confirm an order and payment. We use Amazon S3 to provide access to client certificates. Files are protected in transit by TLS and at rest by server-side encryption.
4. Not applicable. To quell overofficious legal demands, all legal complaints and requests (DMCA, Trademark, Defamation, Court Order, Law Enforcement, Private Information, Data Protection, Government, etc) are forwarded to Lumen.
5. We’ll respond with one-liners from Fifty Shades :D We have nothing to share with authorities, even if we felt compelled to. If we run into trouble, we’ll stop updating our Warrant Canary.
6. Yes, P2P is permitted on all Doublehop VPN servers and treated equally to other traffic, although we encourage our users to avoid using USA-based exit nodes for such traffic. For example, it’s better to connect to USA as a Doublehop VPN entry node, and exit Netherlands than it is to connect to Netherlands as an entry node, exiting USA.
7. Doublehop’s only accepted payment method is Bitcoin. Since we do not require our clients to reveal their identity to use our services, paying with Bitcoin offers privacy when used properly. A new Bitcoin address is generated for each order, and monitored for 72 hours before being scrubbed from the order details.
8. Our users VPN to Country_A, and we route them over an encrypted interconnection to another data center; the traffic then exits Country_B. We use a modern cipher (AES-256-CBC) between clients and nodes, with RSA-4096 for key exchange/certs, and force client use of TLS >=1.2 with the tls-version-min OpenVPN directive. We have h/w crypto acceleration on all our boxes.
Our VPN clients see: Cipher ‘AES-256-CBC’ initialized with 256 bit key. TLSv1.2, cipher TLSv1/SSLv3 DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384, 4096 bit RSA
9. We don’t provide custom tools for good reason (see Q.10 for more info). DNS leak protection is best handled by the hosts file or by pushing OpenVPN options to clients. We use OpenVPN options to offer DNS leak protection (which Windows 10 is prone to).
10. No, the standard OpenVPN client is more transparent and open to peer review. Some VPN providers offer custom software that can introduce security issues or store connection logs. We provide configs for Linux, Android, iOS, Mac OS X (Viscosity), and Windows Vista+.
11. We use dedicated servers that employ RAM disks, software based full disk encryption, or hardware-based full disk encryption, depending on their role and specifications. This ensures that any intervention from a provider won’t assist in any investigation. Traffic between nodes is multiplexed, defeating passive correlation. And furthermore, Doublehop VPN doubles security and privacy with double hops across multiple legal jurisdictions, to disrupt potential investigations.
Our clients are permitted to use whichever DNS they’re most comfortable with! By default, we use Google DNS to ensure that users receive localized content from the exit node chosen. This is especially important when it comes to streaming (e.g., Netflix, Pandora) from a USA exit node. We’re looking to add a SmartDNS and DNSCrypt server in the near future to provide additional options for our clients.
12. Netherlands, Spain, Finland, Canada, and USA, all configured as Doublehop VPN pairs (Map).
Doublehop website
VPNAUS
vpnaus1. We do not record or store any logs related to our services, specifically speak, no traffic, DNS or metadata logs are stored. Keeping our users anonymous is important to us. This is in line with our Privacy Policy for our service, which we have especially worked on to be simple, clear and concise.
2. We are known as VPNAUS Ltd Pty. We are located in Australia, and are one of the very few true aussie based virtual service providers. We run under Australian jurisdiction.
3. Google is the only external based system we use. We make standard use of Google Apps and Google Analytics. All other support tools are kept internal for our users and visitors.
4. As we do not keep any records of activities, nor do we host and content. As such we are unable to remove content that does not exist. In the event that a DMCA notice is received by our abuse team, it is processed accordingly, however no forwarding of user details has ever occurred.
5. All notices are carefully examined when received. We have never passed any customer related information across to a third party, as we simply do not store records of activity. Our systems use shared IP addresses which means we are unable to identify individual traffic. We have also not received any valid court orders.
6. All web activity, including BitTorrent and P2P is allow by all our servers by default. We do not limit or block any traffic across any of our servers.
7. We currently accept all forms of credit card payments through the payment gateway Stripe. PayPal is also an alternative method. We keep billing independent from our system, it is handled with only a basic reference of whether our customers have paid or not using reference codes. We do not store any billing information such as credit cards or addresses.
8. We run multiple encryption methods, including PPTP, L2TP, as well as OpenVPN. We recommend using OpenVPN as it’s the most secure. We currently run up to AES-256 encryption.
9. We do not support IPv6 connections currently. We do plan to add DNS leak and kill switches directly into our custom app in the future. We have a proviso on the page to disable IPv6 connections for all client side connection methods (eg. app, windows, Mac) as well as disabling its usage currently on all of our VPN servers directly until such time we support it.
10. Yes we have a custom VPN application. At this point in time, we support the Windows platform, however mobile and other OS platforms will be added in the future to allow ease of use and access for any user on any device or platform.
11. Our VPN servers are virtual, and also hosted by a diverse range of third party providers. We ensure that no logs and no credentials are stored. We have direct access to each system and we ensure that only hashes on servers. We have local VPN server DNS, as well as the ability to proxy your DNS through third parties for such as Google DNS, which is fast stable and impossible to track.
12. Rather than having a large number of systems, we have a limited number of locations to ensure quality over quantity. We currently provide the following service locations: Australia (Perth), Japan (Tokyo), United States (West), United Kingdom (London). We also still expanding our locations, and plan to have a VPN system in every state of Australia, as well as all the major countries, and we expand based on customer demand.
VPNAUS website
SHADEYOU VPN
shadeyou1. ShadeYou VPN does not keep any logs. The highest level of privacy is a main mission of ShadeYou VPN. To use our service only a username and e-mail are required. No personal or real data is required.
2. We are incorporated as DATA ACCENTS LP and operate under jurisdiction of United Kingdom.
3. We are using Google Analytics as a tool which allow us to improve our website and bring our users better experience. Also we are using SiteHeart online support. But none of these tools track / hold personal information.
4. The abuse team of ShadeYou VPN answers as follows: a) we do not store any illegal content on our servers. b) every our user agrees with our privacy policy while registering, so we warned that illegal actions are prohibited and at this time we are not responsible. c) we have no any personal data of our users or any logs of their activities that can be shared with third-parties because we simple do not store it.
5. Sharing any personal data of our users is absolutely impossible since we do not store it and do not keep any logs. Yes such kind of situation has happened but there is not even one existing case when we have shared any information about our users with any 3rd parties.
6. BitTorrent and any other file-sharing traffic is allowed mostly on all our servers. There’s only a few exceptions (such as when traffic is limited on the servers).
7. ShadeYou VPN uses payment systems including PayPal, Perfect Money, Webmoney, Qiwi, Yandex Money, Easy Pay, Ligpay, UnionPay, AliPay, MINT, CashU, Ukash also accept payments via Visa, Master Card, Maestro and Discover. Of course Bitcoin is available.
8. We strongly recommend to use OpenVPN since it is the most safe and uses the strongest encryption (TLS Protocol with 4096-bit key length and AES-256-CBC crypto-algorithm).
9. We are not working with IPv6 at the moment but we are working on it. We support “Kill switches” and DNS leak protection using our desktop client.
10. Yes, we offer our own application which is available on the Windows OS. It is very simple and easy-to-use. Mobile clients are developing at the moment.
11. All our servers are collocated around the world in DC’s of different leading hosting companies. Yes, we are using our own DNS servers.
12. Here is an overview.
ShadeYou VPN website
OVPN.TO
ovpnto1. Short answer: No! We don’t create or keep any logs.
2. We’re not a company and we operate under no jurisdiction. Servers are running under their local jurisdiction and have to follow local laws.
3. No.
4. We check portforwards, close them and send the notice into your account.
5. We have never received any valid court order or subpoena. Anyways, we’re unable to identify our clients and we’d shutdown affected servers when needed.
6. BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic is allowed, but we’d recommend downloading from Usenet.
7. We support Bitcoin, Litecoin and other Crypto Currency, WebMoney.ru, PerfectMoney.is and some pre-paid vouchers. No references are left after transaction with Crypto Currency and you can always ask us to update your payment id.
8. We recommend AES-256-CBC/GCM cipher and HMAC SHA512 with 4096 bit certificates, standard setting on all servers.
9. Yes, we support Linux with IPtables and Windows with our Client Software. This offers protection against IPv6 leaks.
10. We offer an open-source Client for Windows and headless API script for Linux.
11. We use rented dedicated servers from different providers and we provide are own DNS servers.
12. Check our server page.
oVPN.to website
CACTUSVPN
cactus1. We don’t keep any logs.
2. CactusVPN Inc., Canada
3. No.
4. We have not received any official notices yet. We will only respond to local court orders.
5. If we have a valid order from Canadian authorities we have to help them identify the user. But as we do not keep any logs we just can’t do that. We have not received any orders yet.
6. Yes, it is allowed on Dutch and Romanian servers.
7. PayPal, Credit Card, BitCoin and a list of other not so popular payment options.
8. We recommend users to use SoftEther with ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 cipher suite.
9. Yes, we have these features. For now we do not support IPv6. We recommend our clients to disable IPv6 when they use the VPN service. with the current version of CactusVPN software for Windows, we implemented a feature that disables IPv6 automatically when the VPN is connecting and reenable it when VPN is disconnecting.
10. We have VPN apps for Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android.
11. We use servers from various Data centers.
12. US, UK, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, France, Romania.
CactusVPN website
WINDSCRIBE
1. We do not store connection logs, IP timestamps, or sites you visit (we are firm believer that one’s browsing history should be taken to one’s grave). We store total amount of bandwidth your account has consumed in 1 month period, which is reset every month on the day of your registration. This is used to enforce free tier limitations (as you can use Windscribe for free) as well as prevent abuse. We do not store historical usage.
2. Windscribe is operated by Windscribe Limited, in Ontario, Canada, which has no data retention directives that apply to VPN companies.
3. We do not rely on any 3rd party tools. Website analytics are collected via self-hosted Piwik instance, and the helpdesk is powered by an open source version of osTicket, which is also hosted in-house. Emails are sent out directly through our servers, and we don’t utilize 3rd party mail sending services.
4. Since we have no logs to link this kind of activity to any single user, we simply notify the sending party of this fact.
5. Although we never received a valid court order for user data, we received multiple subpoenas from various law enforcement branches of governments. Our response is always the same: as we don’t keep any logs that can link historical activity to any single user, we have nothing that we could provide.
6. BitTorrent is allowed on all servers except India, which has strict abuse policies and it’s the only way we can keep servers there. We simply block known torrent trackers in that location.
7. We accept payment via Paypal, Credit card (through Stripe), Bitcoin (through Bitpay) and Payment Wall. Transaction IDs are discarded after they are verified to be legitimate payments.
8. We use AES-256 cipher with SHA512 auth and a 4096-bit RSA key. We support perfect forward secrecy. This is the only configuration we offer.
9. Our desktop application comes with a built in firewall, which blocks all activity outside of the tunnel. This is superior to a “kill switch” because its a proactive measure. If your connection drops, any external connectivity is blocked by default, which guarantees that there will be no leaks. The same firewall also blocks ipv6 and WebRTC requests from leaking. Each node is configured as a DNS server, which is only accessible via the tunnel over a LAN ip, this guarantees that requests will be made over the tunnel, with no chance of leaks.
Our browser extension blocks ads, trackers, social widgets, and rotates the user agent. This allows for much greater level of privacy, as a VPN alone will not give you the level of protection that is typically advertised.
10. We offer custom applications for Windows, Mac, Google Chrome, Firefox, iOS and Android is coming in Q2 2017.
11. We lease dedicated machines from 3rd party hosting providers world wide. Each VPN node is configured as a DNS server, which is only accessible over a LAN ip, if you’re connected to the node itself.
12. We operate servers in 45 countries, which are listed here.
Windscribe website
TRACELESS
1. No. As a privacy provider we are taking our users’ privacy very seriously. The most important part of that attitude is depicted in our strict No-Logging-Policy. We neither store connection nor usage logs. The only traffic related information that we do store is the amount of bandwidth used with free user accounts. This information is stored temporarily for the time span of 30 days and purged automatically after that time period.
2. Kazana Solutions, Germany.
3. No, we don’t use any third-party services. Everything is in-house developed and run on our own dedicated servers that we configure and manage. In case we didn’t find an adequate open-source project that we could utilize for our needs, we created our own solution like our newsletter system.
4. We process all DMCA notices by explaining, that we are not able to identify a certain user due to our zero logs infrastructure. We don’t forward DMCA notices to our users as we are not able to identify them by individual activity.
5. We have never received a court order requesting us to identify a user of our service. If we ever receive such a request, it would be impossible for us to comply as we do not keep any logs. In addition to that, we operate in a jurisdiction that doesn’t require mandatory data retention for our kind of service.
6. Yes, we allow all BitTorrent and P2P traffic. We do not limit or block this kind of traffic as long as it complies with our Terms of Service.
7. We accept Bitcoin, Paypal, Credit Cards and a variety of other payment methods via Paymentwall. In the past we were able to handle all payment needs of our users. With the help of a request via our livechat, they were also able to pay in cash money or alternative cryptocurrencies like Monero. The only data linked to the user account is the payment status of the individual subscription. No further data is attached the subscription nor linkable to the user online activity.
8. We offer 8 different VPN and Proxy protocols including SSTP, L2TP, IKEv2, HTTP(S) Proxy. We give recommendations based on the specific use case and requirements of the user. The most secure and practical protocols that we recommend are OpenVPN and IKEv2 – both setup to provide the maximum level of encryption and security.
9. We are currently working on upgrading our system to fully support IPv6 connections on all available protocols. So far, we prevent IPv6 and DNS leaks from the software side. Our software also features a “Kill Switch” feature which immediately disconnects the internet if the VPN connection drops.
10. Yes. At the moment, we offer a custom VPN Client for Windows operating systems. We are just beta testing our Android application which will launch very soon. We plan on also covering the iOS and OSX environment this year with native applications. All our software comes with additional security features like DNS Leak protection and internet kill switches.
11. All our VPN servers are located in hand-picked data centers around the world hosted by partners whom we trust and have a very good relationship with. We do run our own DNS servers and it is set by default for all VPN protocols.
12. We are currently having servers located in eleven countries world-wide and planning to introduce more locations this year based on our users requirements. You can find an up-to-date list here.
Traceless website
ONEVPN
1. The answer to this question is 50% ‘Yes’ and 50% ‘No’.
We do not keep any log of users’ original IP which can lead anyone to their physical location. We do maintain the login and logout time against the client area username for the bandwidth usage by user. We keep the bandwidth usage data only for 7 days until the money-back guarantee is valid. On the eight day, we discard the data and keep zero logs of our paid users.
2. OneVPN is a product of Unravel Technologies, a Hong Kong based registered company.
3. No, we do not use any external visitor trackers or support tools. For communicating with customers regarding their initial credentials, inquires, support tickets and complaints, we have a customized in-house emailing portal. For sending marketing emails and Newsletters, we use Sandy (Amazon based email portal).
4. Based in Hong Kong, we are not bound by any law to keep logs of our users. The only information we have about our client is the login and logout time. This information can only lead towards OneVPN’s server which the user might have connected to. We cannot provide any further information because we do not have any. If any DMCA or other notice landed to us, all we can provide them is login and logout time.
5. First of all, in all ten months of our operations it has never happened to us. If any such scenario arises in future, we cannot identify the user as we do not have any logs of our user’s identity. We can only lead to the server the user once connected to.
6. Yes, BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic is allowed on all OneVPN’s servers except USA, Canada, and Australia. We have physical servers and in the aforementioned countries P2P file sharing is not allowed. Users can connect to Netherlands, Germany, France, or any other server to download torrents.
7. We offer PayPal, Web Money, BitCoin, and Credit Card option via third party merchants. The user visits OneVPN’s website and selects the payment method. Once the payment is made by the user, it goes directly to the Payment merchant. The Payment Merchant verifies the payment and gives OneVPN the go head.
We send the credentials for the user via email. Once the payment is through it lands in OneVPN’s account. In the entire process, the user provides the required information to the Payment Merchant and not to OneVPN. This way every user is anonymous to us.
8. OneVPN is among the few VPN providers to offer Openconnect via Cisco Anyconnect. This protocol helps users to achieve the highest level of security with 256bit AES encryption and the fastest speed at the same time. We highly recommend all our users to use Openconnect protocol.
9. We do not support IPV6. Hence, it eliminates all vulnerabilities associated with IPV6 leaks. The best and most recommended way to avoid IPv6 leaks is to disable the functionality from your desktop interface. Yes, we do provide DNS leak protection and NAT firewall comes with all our VPN servers. The user does not need any manual configuration or prior setting for DNS leak protection. We also provide an Internet Kill Switch feature in our Windows App. You can also configure the Kill Switch option on your Mac while using OneVPN.
10. We offer customized VPN apps for Windows, Mac, and Android.
11. We have selected the best data centers to host our servers. We operate 100% physical servers which all run on BSD. All our VPN servers have their own DNS.
12. We have 60+ VPN servers deployed in 20 countries. You can check the complete list of all the locations here.
OneVPN website
VPN PROVIDERS WITH SOME LOGS
VPN.AC
vpnac1. We keep connection logs for 1 day to help us in troubleshooting customers’ connection problems but also to identify attacks (e.g. bruteforce, account theft). This information contains IP address, connection start and end time, protocol used (including port) and amount of data transferred.
2. Netsec Interactive Solutions SRL, registered in Romania.
3. No.
4. We are handling DMCA complaints internally without involving the users (i.e. we are not forwarding anything). We use shared IP addresses so it’s not possible to identify the users.
5. It has never happened. In such an event, we would rely on legal advice.
6. It is allowed.
7. Bitcoin, PayPal, Credit/Debit cards, Perfect Money, pre-paid voucher cards and more.
8. OpenVPN using Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Key Exchange (ECDHE, curve secp256k1) is used by default in most cases. We also support and RSA-4096, SHA256 and SHA512 for digest/HMAC. For data encryption we use AES-256-GCM and AES-128-GCM.
9. Our client software can block IPv6 traffic. DNS leak protection is forced by default and it’s not optional. A ‘kill switch’ is available with our client software.
10. We offer clients for Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, Linux (still in beta), as well as browser addons for Chrome, Firefox, Opera.
11. We have physical control of our servers in Romania. In other countries we rent or collocate our hardware. We have some measures in place to prevent and alert us in case of unauthorized physical access. We use our own DNS resolvers and we encrypt all DNS queries from VPN gateways to DNS resolvers.
12. Locations are listed in real-time here.
VPN.ac website
IRONSOCKET
ironsocket1. We keep limited session logs for all of our services. These logs record the duration of a connection, the IP address used for the connection and the number of bytes transferred.
These logs are typically kept for 72 hours, usually less, after which they are purged. We log this data for fraud and abuse detection/prevention. Since we use shared IPs on our servers, and do not log activity, it is difficult to associate specific activity with individual users.
2. IronSocket is owned and operated by Pusa and Daga Hong Kong Limited in the jurisdiction of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
3. We do not use any third-party email providers or support tools. We use Google Analytics and HasOffers which have minimal visitor tracking information used for website usage reporting and management of our affiliate program, respectively.
4. IronSocket is not subject to the DMCA or any international equivalent. We do NOT host any user uploaded content on any of our servers. While IronSocket is not subject to DMCA, some of our hosting and data center partners reside in locations that are. If they escalate a DMCA notice to us, we reply to the provider that we are a service provider like them, and that we do not log our user’s activity.
5. This has not happened. It is our policy to cooperate with legal orders that are valid under Hong Kong SAR law. The process to address such request is:
1. Verify the order is legal and valid
2. Consult with legal counsel to determine what we are required to provide
3. Determine if we have the data being requested
Because of our privacy policy, terms of service, shared IP usage, and anonymous payment methods, it would be difficult to impossible to associate a specific activity with an individual user.
6. P2P traffic is allowed on servers in countries where such traffic is not restricted. We do not allow P2P on all servers due to the legal pressure on the data centers in certain regions of the world. All traffic is treated equally on our network.
7. We accept credit / debit card payments via SafeCharge and PayPal. Bitcoin transactions are processed by BitPay and major US brand gift cards are handled by PayGarden. We do not collect sensitive payment information. Any sensitive payment information is maintained by each respective payment processor and is linked by a unique transaction number.
8. OpenVPN with strong encryption: AES 256-bit encryption with SHA256 message authentication, using a 4096-bit key for secure authentication.
9. We are currently beta testing a new client for Microsoft Windows systems that offers DNS leak protection and VPN drop protection. VPN drop protection has the option of killing specific applications or the system’s network connection.
10. We are currently beta testing a new client for Microsoft Windows systems that offers support for the OpenVPN, L2TP, and PPTP VPN protocols.
11. We host and maintain our own DNS servers. We manage all our VPN servers but they are hosted and maintained by third-party data centers. We vet all providers prior to engaging their services and we continuously evaluate the quality of service and responsiveness to our requirements and requests.
12. We have hundreds of servers in 38 different countries and are always adding more. The most up-to-date list can be found here.
IronSocket website
SEED4.ME
seed4me1. We do not analyze or DPI traffic. We also do not keep logs on VPN nodes. General connection logs are stored on a secure server for 7 days to solve network issues if there are any. These logs are deleted after seven days if there are no network problems.
2. Taiwan. Seed4.Me Inc., We are not aware of any legislation requiring us to share client information and we are not aware of any precedents in Taiwan where client information was disclosed. We do not hold much information anyway. On the other hand, we do not welcome illegal activities which potentially harm other people.
3. Currently we utilize Google Analytics and G Suite (ex. Google Apps). Regarding G Suite, we do not store any sensitive information there, only support issues.
4. In case of abuse, we null route the IP to keep ourselves in compliance with the DMCA. Currently we use simple firewall rules to block torrents in countries where DMCA applies.
5. We will act in accordance with the laws of the jurisdiction, only if a court order comes from a jurisdiction where the affected server is located. Fortunately, as I said before, we do not keep any logs on VPN nodes, on the other hand we do not encourage illegal activity. This has never happened.
6. Torrents are allowed on our VPN servers in Switzerland and Sweden. These are torrent-friendly countries with high-quality data centers and network. We treat BitTorrent, P2P, streaming and any other traffic equally on all servers.
7. We accept Bitcoin, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Webmoney, QIWI, Yandex.Money, Bank transfer and In-App purchases in our mobile apps. We do not store sensitive payment information on our servers, in most cases payment system simply sends us a notification about successful payment with the amount of payment. We validate this data and grant access to VPN. BTW, we do not require the name of the card holder when he pays for the VPN in our desktop app.
8. Obfuscated OpenVPN with 2048-bit key will be a good choice, it’s available in our Desktop and Android apps. Also, our iOS App has Automatic protection option that guarantees for example that all outgoing connections on open Wi-Fi will be encrypted and passed through secure VPN channel.
9. We do provide DNS leak protection in our Desktop app and we suggest that customers turn off IPv6 support. We don’t provide a kill switch for desktop yet. We are still compatible with free software that prevents unsecured connections after VPN connection goes down.
10. We have apps for Windows, iOS, Android and Amazon Kindle.
11. All servers are remotely administered by our team only, no outsourcing. No data is stored on VPN nodes (if the node is confiscated, there will not be any data). We prefer to deal with trustworthy Tier-3 (PCI-DSS) data centers and providers to ensure reliable service with high security. As for DNS, we use Google, users can override these settings with their own.
12. Currently we offer VPN nodes in 17 countries: USA, UK, Canada, France, Russia, Switzerland (torrent-friendly), Sweden (torrent-friendly), Ukraine, Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Italy, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Israel and South Korea.
Seed4.me website
Note: several of the providers listed in this article are TorrentFreak sponsors. We reserve the first three spots for our sponsors, as a courtesy. We never sell positions in our review article or charge providers for a listing.
Source: https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/
