Someone could plan a terrorist attack behind a VPN, but since it doesn’t keep logs, there’s no way to find out the real person’s IP? That seems dangerous.
No logs=/=No tapping the connections.
Say you connect to a vpn on the internet. The vpn server still sees your ip you connect with. Before the vpn client software can send your traffic to the vpn, it must first encrypt it and wrap it in the vpn’s network protocol. Well, the rest of the internet doesn’t necessarily understand this vpn language. So the vpn server then unwraps the encrypted vpn protocol from your outgoing packets and then sends it out. The source ip of the packets being sent out now have the vpn’s ip rather than yours.
When traffic comes back from the internet the processed is just reversed. The vpn gets the normal internet traffic, wraps the vpn tunnel encryption on it, and sends it back to you.
But maybe you noticed something. The vpn still knows what the normal traffic is and the ip (yours) using it. Under say, a warrant, the vpn server can be tapped and then it’s essentially it’s not really any less hidden than if they tapped your isp. Unless you take multiple steps. And even then depending on the seriousness of the crime law enforcement agencies can cooperate with other govts at whatever region the other servers are located.
Also hiding your ip may not help if cookies, geotracking, and many other things that could be bypassing the vpn in some form.
Despite what the vpn propaganda tells you, a vpn would be more like one of multiple steps to do the things they claim. Certainly quite useful for having more security on public wifi. Not so much from hiding yourself from all things internet on its own.
generally, evidence in court isn’t from a single source. lots of corroborating materials are presented to win a case.
just remember that you have a variety of people as jurors. some will not understand vpn even if you explained it to them.
remember what george carlin said about average person and intelligence.
anyone who has ever been a juror knows our society is filled with people who should be wearing helmets.
No logs = less hassle for the VPN company. Less data to store, nothing to provide when served with a warrant or subpoena.
Serious criminals have many ways to communicate, including stolen phones and stolen accounts and hijacked computers and custom cryptography. Logging everyone’s activity would sacrifice the privacy of all of us while catching few serious criminals.
I don’t know what country you live in but where I live, we’re afforded a certain amount of rights. Privacy is a human right. So with your logic, logs should he kept on everyone because we don’t know who the terrorist is. And when that happens, I guarantee that someone will find a reason to read “YOUR” log, every day. Is that what you want? Also with your logic, intelligence, police, governmental agencies, should keep logs of your mail that is delivered to your house and have a right to read that mail, whenever they please. We don’t know if “YOU” are the terrorist, so those agencies would have the right to just open and read your mail daily. Is that what you’re advocating for? Because terrorist use the postal service as well. Spying on the good citizens to weed out the VERY FEW, bad ones, is not a good plan.
Literally every VPN provider claims to have a “strict no logs policy” in place. That’s because it just sounds better than stating the truth: “We don’t log personal identifiable information”. But even if this is true is highly questionable.
Almost all providers limit the number of devices that can simultaniously use one account with the provider. How on earth do they want to know with how many devices I’m already connected if they don’t log? Exactly - they can’t know this without logging.
I’m not against VPNs. They certainly have their use cases. For example protecting your connection in “hostile” networks like strange Wifis or removing silly errors like “This content is not available in your location”. But they do nothing for you in terms of privacy, unless you use a complicated setup with two nested VPNs (different providers) and pay the second provider anonymously. And then NEVER connect in the wrong sequence.
If you’re still not convinced, here are ressources that might convince you:
https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Tunnels/Introduction#VPN_Tunnel_Risks
Edit: Interesting is this point from the second link, section “Criteria for Reviewing VPN Providers”: Quote: “known cases of malicious activity” .
Okay yeah that’s a good point and I agree with you. I’m just curious how the no logs VPN doesn’t open itself up to lawsuits if say someone filed a police report against a VPN user but the company wasn’t able to help