「門番」としての VPN

1. Do you keep (or share with third parties) ANY data that would allow you to match an IP-address and a timestamp to a current or former user of your service? If so, exactly what information do you hold/share and for how long?
2. What is the name under which your company is incorporated (+ parent companies, if applicable) and under which jurisdiction does your company operate?
3. What tools are used to monitor and mitigate abuse of your service, including limits on concurrent connections if these are enforced?
4. Do you use any external email providers (e.g. Google Apps), analytics, or support tools ( e.g Live support, Zendesk) that hold information provided by users?
5. In the event you receive a DMCA takedown notice or a non-US equivalent, how are these handled?
6. What steps would be taken in the event a court orders your company to identify an active or former user of your service? How would your company respond to a court order that requires you to log activity for a user going forward? Have these scenarios ever played out in the past?
7. Is BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic allowed on all servers? If not, why? Do you provide port forwarding services? Are any ports blocked?
8. Which payment systems/providers do you use? Do you take any measures to ensure that payment details can’t be linked to account usage or IP-assignments?
9. What is the most secure VPN connection and encryption algorithm you would recommend to your users?
10. Do you provide tools such as “kill switches” if a connection drops and DNS/IPv6 leak protection? Do you support Dual Stack IPv4/IPv6 functionality?
11. Are any of your VPN servers hosted by third parties? If so, what measures do you take to prevent those partners from snooping on any inbound and/or outbound traffic? Do you use your own DNS servers?
12. In which countries are your servers physically located? Do you offer virtual locations?

Broadly speaking, we would say that the “no logs” policies of VPN providers don’t apply to dedicated IPs. That conclusion is backed up by several VPN providers we reached out to, which include VPNArea, NordVPN, CyberGhost, and Torguard.

These providers all have a no-logging policy for their regular VPN service, which relies on shared IP-addresses. However, they see dedicated IP-addresses as a separate and different service, which is treated differently anonymity-wise.

By connecting through a single IP-address, monitoring outfits can build up a profile of the user’s online activity. The real anonymity tradeoff, however, is that the VPN provider knows the user’s IP-address and can connect it to other account information it has on record. This sometimes includes an email address.

With a dedicated IP-address, which is often sold as an add-on, users get a unique IP-address as opposed to a shared one. This can be very convenient as it reduces annoying captchas and can bypass regular VPN blacklists.

ほとんどのVPNと同様に、FREEDOMEは接続ログを作成します。これらのログは、サービスの提供と改善のために使用されます。当社のプライバシーポリシーに記載されているように、サービスを提供し、データ転送をクリーンな状態に保つだけの目的で通信トラフィックを分析します。トラフィックは仮名化されていますので、私たちにはどれがあなたのトラフィックかを知ることはできません。FREEDOMEはトラフィックログを作成しません。

• Reduce the VPN gateway attack surface
• Verify that cryptographic algorithms are Committee on National Security Systems Policy (CNSSP) 15-compliant
• Avoid using default VPN settings
• Remove unused or non-compliant cryptography suites
• Apply vendor-provided updates (i.e. patches) for VPN gateways and client