VPNs Which Keeps You Anonymous in 2017

The threat of online surveillance has become a great threat to the privacy of many internet users. We’ve come to think about the web as a place where we can be free, where we can be ourselves, and where we have our privacy. Now, it would seem that even that is being taken from us, and so many people have decided to do something about it. Fortunately, there are numerous ways to achieve this, and one of them is the VPN service, that keeps your data flow encrypted, your IP address hidden and your online activity doesn’t get recorded.

However, many have started wondering, how anonymous are we online, even through the use of VPNs? And to answer this, we’ve decided to take a look at the policies of our top three VPN providers – TorGuard, IPVanish and Private Internet Access (PIA).

To get a better picture of what are the policies of these VPNs, we’ve decided to ask each of them 12 questions and see what are they going to say. The questions are:

1. Is there any sort of logging that could potentially connect a timestamp to a certain IP address and both of those back to a specific user, and if yes, what information is being recorded and for how long is it being kept?
2. State the registered name of the company that owns the VPN, and jurisdiction or jurisdictions under which it operates?
3. Are any email providers, external visitor tracking methods or any kind of support tools being used to hold info about users or visitors?
4. How are the potential takedown notices being handled?
5. If a valid court order demands that the company identifies one of your users, what steps are taken, and has this kind of situation happened before?
6. Is file-sharing (including BitTorrent) allowed and treated equally as other traffic on all of your servers, and if not, why?
7. State the payment systems that are being used, and explain how are they linked to user accounts?
8. Which encryption algorithm and VPN connection would you recommend as the most secure one?
9. Are there kill switches and DNS leak protection tools available, and how do you handle potential IPv6 leaks?
10. Is there a custom VPN app for the users, and if yes, which platforms does it cover?
11. Are you controlling your VPN servers, or are they being hosted by a third party, and also do you use your DNS servers yourself?
12. In what countries can your servers be found?

These are the questions that we decided to ask our top VPNs, and now, let’s see what they had to say. There’s no value in the order in which the VPNs are displayed.

TORGUARD

1. TorGuard has stated that the company doesn’t store any of the user session data, nor traffic logs. In addition to this, they also run a shared IP configuration, which means that there are several users with the same IP address at once, which makes it literally impossible to tie anything to anyone.
2. The TorGuard VPN is owned, as well as operated, by a company called VPNetworks LLC, and it works under the US jurisdiction. The company is based in Nevis.
3. The company uses anonymized Google Analytics data in order to optimize their website. They also use Sendgrid to enhance the email transactions, and the live chat service is available nonstop, and it’s provided through platform called Livechatinc,
4. If any valid DMCA notice ever gets received, it’s first processed by TorGuard’s abuse team, but no matter how valid it is, they have absolutely nothing to share, due to their no logging policy.
5. Any court order that the company receives is handled by the company’s legal team, and its validity is examined thoroughly. If it turns out that it’s valid, once again, the only thing that TorGuard can do is explain the nature of their policy and the fact that they have nothing to contribute with.
6. BitTorrent and every other kind of P2P traffic are completely allowed through the VPN. In fact, there’s no blocking or limitation of any kind of traffic, at all.
7. Over 200 different payment methods are currently available and acceptable when it comes to TorGuard. These include PayPal, altcoins, Bitcoin, all forms of credit card, UnionPay, Alipay, CashU, more than 100 Gift Card brands and many other options. No one can be linked back to billing account, of course, since there are absolutely no logs that are being kept.
8. TorGuard offers an extremely wide range of protocols, for example, OpenVPN, L2TP, IPsec, SSTP, OpenConnect/AnyConnect (SSL VPN), and iKEV2. They advise their clients to use OpenVPN for best security and to select the cipher option AES-256-CBC, with 4096bit RSA and SHA512 HMAC. They stated that they use TLS 1.2 on all of the servers, and when it comes to faster speeds, they recommend OpenConnect SSL VPN with cipher option AES-256-GCM.
9. They’ve stated that there are strict security features provided by the company and that IPv6 gets automatically disabled, just like any DNS and WebRTC leaks that might appear. There’s, of course, a kill switch, a general one, and another one used for applications. All of the security features are enabled instantly, as soon as TorGuard is installed.
10. The platforms covered by TorGuard include Windows, Android, Mac OS X, iOS, and Linux. They also offer setup tools for routers and a proxy app for Chrome and Firefox.
11. The company has full physical control over every bit of their hardware, and only work with those data centers that accept their security criteria, which is extremely strict. TorGuard’s staff is the only personnel that’s allowed to manage the servers, and there’s absolutely no risk of any sort of data leak.
12. The company currently has servers in more than 53 countries and expands its reach every single month. Full access to their network is allowed to all of its users.

IPVANISH

1. No logs are being recorded by IPVanish.
2. The VPN is owned by Mudhook Marketing Inc., and it’s based in The State of Florida.
3. When it comes to tools that the company uses, they include Google Analytics, but there are no PII (Personally Identifiable Information) being stored or tracked.
4. There are no media, content, images, streams or anything else that would be used in order to properly form a takedown notice, claims IPVanish.
5. Any request or court order has to be valid in order to even be acknowledged by the company. Even so, if the request asks or any sort of data connected to any of the IP addresses, the company can only inform the institution that issued the request that they have nothing to share. If someone doesn’t like this response, the company simply reminds them that all of their services and operations, as well as their policy, are well within the law and that there’s nothing more to be said about that.
6. Both P2P sharing and BitTorrent are available and allowed through this VPN.
7. IPVanish accepts payment from PayPal, Bitcoin, and any major credit card, and, of course, provides anonymity by not linking any payments or other services.
8. When it comes to the most secure VPN connection, the company has recommended OpenVPN with 256 bit AES.
9. Many security features are provided by IPVanish, and they include a kill switch that works even if the VPN connection drops. There’s also an option that’s user-enabled, and that offers random IP changes. IPv6 is not currently supported, but it will be introduced as a part of one of the future updates. Preventing IP leaks is assured by forcing traffic over IPv4.
10. The platforms that are currently covered by IPVanish include Android, Windows, iOS, and Mac. It can also be enabled on Tomato and DD-WRT routers, as well as gaming consoles.
11. The company owns and personally operates every part of the infrastructure, including their servers. They also offer the fastest VPN on the market.
12. There are currently more than 60 countries that have IPVanish’s servers, including Australia, US, UK, Canada and many more. A complete list can be found on their website.

PIA (PRIVATE INTERNET ACCESS)

PIA Logo

1. To our first question, PIA has stated that they keep no logs related to traffic, DNS, metadata, or sessions and that therefore no one can be tied to any IP address or a timestamp. They stayed true to their privacy policy, and no logs are being kept at all.
2. The company that operates PIA is called London Trust Media Inc., and it has branches in Iceland and the US, which are countries that still have some respect for user privacy.
3. All of the tools and VPN systems used by PIA are proprietary. They’re all maintained in-house, but there are some third-party tools that are being used to provide a better experience for the customers of the VPN.
4. There are no logs and no user-monitoring, but there is an active system that’s there to help relieve abuse.
5. Every and all subpoena that might come in is scrutinized, and even though there have never been official court orders, even if they came, the company cannot give up the information they might want, simply because they don’t have any. Apart from the username and email address of their users, the company doesn’t have or know anything else about them.
6. Both file-sharing and BitTorrent are completely allowed and are being treated equally to any other form of traffic.
7. There are several payment systems, and they include PayPal, Amazon, Bitcoin, Credit Card, Google, CashU, OKPay and even major store-bought gift cards are accepted. Of course, none of the payment data is linked to any user.
8. As an answer to our eight question, PIA stated that their most practical and secure algorithm is their own cipher suite of AES-256 + RSA4096 + SHA256.
9. Users have access to several ways of protection, including kill switch, IPv6 Leak Protection, Mace, shared IP system and DNS leak protection, but the protections available to users aren’t limited to this, as they stressed.
10. There are several custom applications that were very well received by the users, and the reviews are extremely positive. Platforms that are covered by PIA include Windows, Linux, Android, Chrome Extensions, Mac OS X, and iOS.
11. All of the servers are being operated by trusted third-parties, and the company’s business partners, but the company utilizes the servers itself, and it also operates its own DNS servers too. All of them are completely private and do not log.
12. In the beginning of 2017, PIA VPN officially operated 3283 servers located in 37 different cities through 25 different countries, and for more information about this VPN, you can visit their information page.

Well, those are our top three picks for the best VPN position. As you can see, all three of them take your privacy and security very seriously and are doing everything in their power to provide you with the best service and as much anonymity as possible.