Leo S.
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Verified by
Adam B.
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Last updated:
July 30, 2024
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(0)
Nowadays we see more and more major online security flaws raising their ugly head, cases of a scandalous lack of privacy, and even programs that are designed to protect you are prone to fail, which leads to many companies’ credibility being tossed over a bridge. VPN companies are no exception either, and that’s why you should pay extra attention to their no-log policies. VPN companies who don’t have a proven no-log policy may cause you some serious trouble, and even if they promise total anonymity you should still pay attention to their terms of privacy. As you may know, your ISP does keep logs of what you are doing on the internet, but how can your own log data be used against you? Let us explain how, and why hiding your activity through a no-log VPN is essential.
Being logless implies that you are completely anonymous while connected to your VPN service. Many users look for VPNs to hide the fact that they are torrenting, yet many VPN companies in the past have turned their customers in for this illegal practice, bringing serious legal implications and lifetime bans to their own users. Truth be told, all VPN providers log your online activities, bandwidth usage, data provided and more, but fortunately many opt for directing all that information to a null file or folder. In short, they don’t store any of it and are unable to use the logged data against you. Nonetheless, we advise that you should always check a VPN company’s privacy policy and to look for a VPN that allows anonymous payment methods such as Bitcoin to avoid proof of your billing information, name, address, email and the like. Also, it’s important to know the legal rulings of the country the VPN provider is located in.
A VPN company’s location is just as important as their logging policy, which can be a double-edged knife. Some countries have laws that force companies – not only ISPs but VPNs as well – to store logs for a determined amount of time. This is the case in Australia (two years) and Canada (six months). The actual extent of the logging is kind of a grey area, but even if a VPN provider advertises itself as a no-log company then they also need to act in accordance with the law.
Other countries may have avoided official legislation, but a court order could be enough to force a VPN company to hand over their detailed logs – which is the case of the U.S. for instance.
NordVPN is one of the VPN providers you can trust since they practically made security their middle name. Known as the company who provides an exclusive double encryption, it also operates a solid no-log policy and offers other privacy tools like encrypted chat and web proxies. Headquartered in Panama, a safe country regarding internet data retention laws, NordVPN is “empowered to deny any third party requests” and also allows cryptocurrency payment methods such as Bitcoin. However, the company does ask for your username and password as part of the registration process and the website does collect some limited personal user information and site performance data. Other than that, however, NordVPN is a valid choice.
Here’s a VPN company that needs no introduction whatsoever since it is has taken the number one spot as our editor’s choice for the longest period now. In fact, IPVanish is our preferred VPN service because it has no shortage of features, as well as including a zero traffic logs policy. The company firmly states that this strict measure prevents the “collection of both connection and activity logs” and they “never store the metadata about your VPN session”. In this case, your personal information will also be collected via registration and the type of billing information gathered may vary by the method of payment chosen. Alternate methods include the always handy Bitcoin, among many others.
Yet another VPN provider featured as one of our top choices, ExpressVPN is clearly a good investment if you consider the privacy and anonymity it offers. The company provides their services from the stunningly beautiful British Virgin Islands, a country that is open regarding online data retention laws. Although the Islands are considered an overseas British territory, they are not directly governed by EU or UK law. Despite promising a logless service, the company does keep some records concerning the dates you connected to the VPN service, your preferred choice of VPN server location and the total amount of data transferred per day. Nevertheless, ExpressVPN assures that this “cannot be used to identify you, because it does not contain personally identifiable information such as your IP address or time stamps”. Anonymous payment methods are supported and encouraged.
There are some extra little details to consider if you want to enjoy a more complete and anonymous service, such as opting for the right protocol. In general, most VPNs will give you the choice between three or four protocols, with OpenVPN, SSTP, PPTP and L2TP/IPSec being the most common ones. Long story short, these are responsible for your encryption level meaning that the ‘strongest’ one will also be slower. OpenVPN is by default the best combination of both aspects but you may want to learn a bit more about each of them to accurately pick one according to your purpose. A decent no-log VPN provider should also include a kill switch, shared IPs, or VPN over Tor, a security technology designed to please even the most demanding client. With a content rich and responsible VPN provider behind your back, you can throw your online concerns out of the window, as your invisibility cloak will be pretty much flawless.
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