10

Assume scenario that I'm running a company where we offer VPN service, and people nowadays are rightly concerned if some particular VPN provider is trustworthy or in other words that their traffic is not collected, so I was thinking if there is a way for proving that VPN service is 100% safe and that it doesn't collect their traffic.

For me, one good example was a Signal, when FBI demanded user data and basically they didn't have so much to hand them.

Mirsad
  • 10,005
  • 8
  • 33
  • 53

2 Answers2

18

No, there is no way for a VPN provider to prove they don't record any data. They have to process your original traffic at some point and can't prove afterwards that they deleted it without any copies.

Let's say you use the VPN to hide your communication with a plain HTTP website from your ISP. Here, the VPN doesn't magically create an encrypted tunnel between you and the website. It only adds encryption between you and the provider. Your request to the website will eventually leave the provider's infrastructure in its original form and could be recorded by anyone on the way. Since the provider has to handle your data, there is no technical way for them to not (temporarily) know it.

So, you can only either end-to-end encrypt or trust the brokers on the way. Other anonymity solutions such as the Tor network solve the trust problem by routing traffic over multiple nodes of which the majority is expected to be trustworthy and assumed to not collude with each other.

That said, just because they can't prove it doesn't mean there are no trustworthy VPN providers. When choosing a provider you should research their reputation, the jurisdiction they operate in and read about how they intend to keep your privacy and claim to handle your data.

Arminius
  • 43,922
  • 13
  • 140
  • 136
1

This is a pretty good site for looking into what you are talking about... You do need to trust the vpn provider at the end of the day.

https://thatoneprivacysite.net/vpn-section/

This guy has a great breakdown of what vpn providers are located where and which ones offer what services. I'd definitely take a little bit of time to check it out if you are curious about which VPN provider to choose and what they offer.

Giovanni Brown
  • 96
  • 3