When it comes to privacy, keeping your activity and data safe is essential when surfing the web. Many VPN providers claim the service they offer is fast, reliable and with options to connect you to the world. While all these affirmations are good, positive and bring value to the constant game of supply and demand, privacy is the central concern here. Many VPN providers claim they hold a no-logs policy and when scrutiny comes their way, they fall short of their affirmations. So, in this article, we’re going to cover what a no-logs policy means and why you should consider it when investing in your cybersecurity and web anonymity.
You Can’t Prove A Negative
The caveat with a no-logs policy is the inability to prove a negative premise. How can you be so sure? Verifying a VPN’s claims of internet anonymity is impossible without internal auditing processes, which is why many VPN providers hire external auditors, journalists and white-hat hackers to put their services to the test and check if their network data traffic is vulnerable.
Despite audits and marketing strategies, many VPN providers rely on the trust their customers bestow upon them. Regardless of pricing, availability, or parent-company oversight probes, trust is the key issue when it comes to VPN security. No-logs means that the company that provides you with internet anonymity won’t keep a track record of what you do in the web. So whatever you’re doing in the internet: from browsing adult sites, dating apps to sending confidential information for a journalistic investigation behind a VPN, it stays anonymous.
It’s nobody’s business but your own what you do in the internet. No one should be tracking what you do, and its your responsibility to keep it that way, that’s the main reason you should invest in your internet privacy.
All VPNs keep a track of your activity online. If you use your VPN to binge-watch a French Netflix series that isn’t available in India or Latin America, a VPN with logs won’t worry you, as you only wish to beat geo-location issues, but let’s say you’re a journalist in a conflict area reporting a crucial piece of information, or a political dissident, a lawyer, or a concerned citizen trying to find information in a region where authorities restrict internet traffic. In those cases, making a decision could be the key between getting your data out there and being locked away in some cell or facing worse fates.
There are two types of logs connection logs and usage logs. Let’s unpack these a little bit so you, the internet user can know more.
Connection Logs
These data logs are limited to entries that enable the VPN provider the monitoring of the workload on each server so they can handle traffic. These kinds of logs help prevent abuse on a network running a VPN. Any provider that puts a cap on the number of simultaneous connections per user must keep some logs in order to enforce customer limits. With that, you can expect logs on key issues like time connected to a VPN, IP addresses, the server you connected, or diagnostic data you send.
Data retention laws are different across countries, so if your VPN keeps IP addresses connection logs, and you care for your privacy, look elsewhere.
Usage Logs
These logs are the ones VPN providers constantly make reference of in their advertisements. Usage logs are internet tracking tools that your VPN keeps of your activity online: things like websites you visited, content of non-encrypted messages you sent or received, apps on your device, physical and IP locations, in essence, the sort of information logged by internet service providers and advertisements that pushes many users in subscribing to a VPN.
