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Logging defeats privacy and purpose of VPN

Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 8:04 am
by FredNelson
I refer to your page "VPN Gate Anti-Abuse Policy" at http://www.vpngate.net/en/about_abuse.aspx.

In it you said you and your public VPN servers keep logs for two weeks or up to 3 months.

DO YOU KEEP LOGS OF WHICH WEBSITES WE VISIT? If so, it defeats the purpose of VPNs. Many VPNs like Hotspot Shield, HideIP VPN, etc. do NOT keep logs.

In your home page, you said we should use VPN Gate because:

1. You can bypass the government's firewall to browse oversea web sites (e.g. YouTube).
2. You can camouflage your IP address to hide the source of sending information over Internet.

What if the government or police from an authoritarian country ask you for the logs? Then what is the purpose of VPN Gate?

I think you should NOT log which websites we go to to preserve privacy and anonymity. You cannot log and keep to the aims of VPN Gate.

I hope someone from the University or the VPN Gate Project will reply instead of leaving it to users to reply.

Re: Logging defeats privacy and purpose of VPN

Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 10:53 am
by FredNelson
Will the Administrator or the University please reply soon? What is the point of Forum if no one provides any answers?

Re: Logging defeats privacy and purpose of VPN

Posted: Sun May 12, 2013 12:46 pm
by FredNelson
As there is no reply since I first posted my concerns and question 8 days ago, I will not bother with VPN Gate any more. I have lots of bandwidth and thought of signing up as a volunteer. But not if there is no privacy in your VPN.

All the best.

Re: Logging defeats privacy and purpose of VPN

Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 12:40 am
by slacka
FredNelson wrote:
> I refer to your page "VPN Gate Anti-Abuse Policy" at
> http://www.vpngate.net/en/about_abuse.aspx.
>...
> I think you should NOT log which websites we go to to preserve privacy and
> anonymity. You cannot log and keep to the aims of VPN Gate.

Fred,
If you read the abuse policy carefully you will see it ONLY logs:
* Date and time
* ID, IP address and hostname of destination VPN Server
* Type of action (connect or disconnect)
* Raw IP address and hostname of the source VPN client computer
* Type of VPN protocols (SSL-VPN, L2TP, OpenVPN or SSTP)
* VPN Client software-name, version and id (If available)
* Number of packets and bytes during a VPN connection, and debug information of communication errors
No other information will be transmitted to us nor be recorded on our logging server.

As you can see, their servers are not tracking which websites you are visiting. The goals of VPN Gate and Tor are very different. If privacy is your number one concern, you should be looking at Tor instead.

If you are lucky enough to have a fast connection to the uncensored Internet, your contribution would be greatly appreciated by those living under oppressive regimes.

Re: Logging defeats privacy and purpose of VPN

Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 5:10 am
by FredNelson
Thank you, slacka, for your imput.

However, the same page also says:

"We will disclosure the VPN Connection Logs to a policeman, a prosecutor, a lawyer or a court who is authorized by applicable laws."

"If you are a policeman, a prosecutor, a lawyer or a court who is authorized to and wants to analyze the contents of obtained Packet Log files, we can help you to analyze the Packet Logs within rational and practical efforts if we can afford."

What if the police or prosecutor FROM AN OPPRESSIVE REGIME wants to have the log files to persecute its own citizens? Some regimes even banned YouTube.

You said there is no tracking of websites we visit. Then what is the point of VPN Gate helping them "to analyze the Packet Logs" if the Packet logs don't say which websites we went to.

So I am not sure whether VPN Gate doesn't track the websites we go to.

My point is that the purpose of a VPN is ensure privacy and anonymity. VPN Gate is a good concept using volunteers to share bandwidth. But one problem is the above. Another is that an oppressive regime, hacker, or bad hat will be a volunteer to cause mischief or spy on users.

Re: Logging defeats privacy and purpose of VPN

Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 9:06 am
by Spiri
Hi Fred,

it is possible, that there is no other way for Softether to astablish the VPN shareing, in a other case, authorities would switch it off. Logic or?

In old times it was not easy to catch mammuts, they builded a big trap with much food, and all the mammuts fell in, now they can choose what they like, perhaps the biggest, much meat, big nice skins ...

greetings
from Spiri

Re: Logging defeats privacy and purpose of VPN

Posted: Mon May 13, 2013 10:27 am
by slacka
FredNelson wrote:
> What if the police or prosecutor FROM AN OPPRESSIVE REGIME wants to have
> the log files to persecute its own citizens? Some regimes even banned
> YouTube.

Fred you are confusing several issues.

First of all there is local logging and packet inspection and then there are the global logs that are reported back to VPN Gate. These global logs do NOT contain the websites. However, the volunteer running servers around the world can chose to do a packet trace to find out what websites his users are visiting.

If you are currently living under an oppressive regime, you should not be running a VPN Gate server as the authorities could compel you to run a packet sniffer. Last I checked Japan was a sovereign nation and countries like Iran and China have no legal jurisdiction there. However if the Japanese police suspect a Japanese hacker is using a Japanese VPN gate server to commit crimes, VNP gate will assist the authorities. This is a perfectly reasonably position.

It seems like anonymity is your primary concern,so VPN Gate is not for you. Sorry, but there are better solutions out there like Tor.

Re: Logging defeats privacy and purpose of VPN

Posted: Sat May 18, 2013 9:19 am
by FredNelson
Thank you, slacka, for your clear and informative explanation.

I will give VPN Gate a try and will even try Tor.

Re: Logging defeats privacy and purpose of VPN

Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2019 9:41 pm
by ayoribatox
FredNelson wrote:
Sat May 04, 2013 8:04 am
I refer to your page "VPN Gate Anti-Abuse Policy" at http://www.vpngate.net/en/about_abuse.aspx.

In it you said you and your public VPN servers keep logs for two weeks or up to 3 months.

DO YOU KEEP LOGS OF WHICH WEBSITES WE VISIT? If so, it defeats the purpose of VPNs. Many VPNs like Hotspot Shield, HideIP VPN, etc. do NOT keep logs.

In your home page, you said we should use VPN Gate because:

1. You can bypass the government's firewall to browse oversea web sites (e.g. YouTube).
2. You can camouflage your IP address to hide the source of sending information over Internet.

What if the government or police from an authoritarian country ask you for the logs? Then what is the purpose of VPN Gate?

I think you should NOT log which websites we go to to preserve privacy and anonymity. You cannot log and keep to the aims of VPN Gate.

I hope someone from the University or the VPN Gate Project will reply instead of leaving it to users to reply.
As there is no reply since I first posted my concerns and question 8 days ago, I will not bother with VPN Gate any more. I have lots of bandwidth and thought of signing up as a volunteer. But not if there is no privacy in your VPN.