VPNs: Is it OK to Monitor ‘Bad’ Users on Ethical Grounds?

[Penthus 0]

"While VPN providers are expected to act in accordance with the law, is there also room for them to apply their own sets of moral standards in judging who and who should not be monitored? That’s the issue we explore today with VPN provider Proxy.sh, who last weekend and despite their no-logging policy decided to monitor and identify one of their users accused of harassment by a third party."

 

VPNs: Is it OK to Monitor ‘Bad’ Users on Ethical Grounds?

 

See also AirVPN's comment on how they would find people who break their terms of service (e.g., a reported violation of the European Convention for Human Rights).

 

Logs, raids and monitoring

[Guest summoner23]

I would really like to see the owner of AirVPN make an up to date post about how he deals with human rights reports etc and if AirVPN would monitor a server if someone did the same thing that happen to Proxy.sh on AirVPN's servers or if they would just try to block ports etc on said server or just ignore it till they get a vaild court order.

 

I know that Italy has a retention law and even if it doesn't matter for VPN providers it does matter for the data-center that said servers are hosted in. I'm pretty sure that the data-centers in Italy or any other country with a data retention law is logging all traffic in and out of their data center. I would really love to hear how they get around this.

 

So instead of making users search through a ton of threads on the matter to find year old replies on the matter. AirVPN should make a forum or a dedicated page to answer all the question that have been rising in the past month due to Proxy.sh and if providers can really be trusted as of right now. AirVPN is on top of my list for the provider that i'm going to switch to when my year of PIA is up next month. 

 

I just feel like if they have doubts about a data-center logging or something they should put it on the server page and put a rank for what they think the most anonymous country is that they have in order.

 

I kind of feel like AirVPN has a lack in response to this situation.

 

That is just my two cents on the matter and would love to see an up to date in-depth reply from AirVPN on the matter.

[Staff 9971]

Hello,

 

questions specifically directed to AirVPN founders are not answered in this message, of course. You can refer to the Terms of Service in the meantime.

 

We are not aware that any datacenter where our servers are located performs traffic logging and we have some evidence that they do not (and they are not obliged to do so, not that it means much).

 

Anyway, this kind of logging is not the real issue here. The real issue is whether traffic logging is assisted by timing correlations on the VPN server, otherwise the logging would be ineffective to produce anything valid (unless there's only one client connected to the server).

 

You can imagine wiretapping boxes put on the servers ends, methods of undetectable servers control that do not leave trace and that would make correlations easy etc., assuming that a datacenter is willing to spend on such things. If you feel that it's the case, there's no claim in this world that can convince you or anybody else that this is not happening: just perform partition of trust. You have absolutely no other option to the best of our knowledge.

 

https://airvpn.org/topic/54-using-airvpn-over-tor/?do=findComment&comment=1745

 

Kind regards

[Guest summoner23]

The problem with TOR is how slow it is haha

 

I'm just surprised that the owners of AirVPN didn't release any statement since Proxy.sh mentioned AirVPN and a few other providers in their statement on Oct-1. 

 

It would be nice if they or someone who deals with notices would tell the users how they deal with notices from lawyers etc and if they only follow through with deputes with a vaild court order or if they are pretty much doing the same thing as proxy.sh

 

I had a look at the Terms of Service and couldn't really understand it as i'm no lawyer.  It would be nice if they broke it down in laymen's terms for it's users.

[Royee 10]

So we can add Proxy.sh and hide my ass and earthvpn to the bad list ?   All 3 of them have had issues with giving up customers details or monitoring them or reporting them to authorities,  then they still advertise privacy on the front of their own websites!

 

I too would like an update on the matter,  were all aware that one can use Tor.  I do not use Tor simply since its quite slow,   considered VPN tunneling and adding a 2nd VPN to the mix,  but then as someone on here suggested,  all your data is still able to be monitored by VPN provider 1 anyhow.  I also think connecting to Tor and then airVPN could be dangerous as in your ISP can then see your connecting to Tor network and then all of a sudden your encrypted,  this may cause alarm bells id imagine !

[Staff 9971]

I too would like an update on the matter,  were all aware that one can use Tor.  I do not use Tor simply since its quite slow,   considered VPN tunneling and adding a 2nd VPN to the mix,  but then as someone on here suggested,  all your data is still able to be monitored by VPN provider 1 anyhow. 

 

Hello,

 

well, not really: VPN 1 knows your real IP address but receives and sends totally encrypted traffic to/from a single end-point. VPN 2 can see your traffic (if not encrypted end-to-end) but does not know neither your identity (well, at least with services which accept Bitcoin etc.) nor your real IP address.

 

Or vice-versa, of course.

 

This increases the anonymity layer strength, no doubts. However, remember that you are partitioning trust between two parties only, which can know each other.

 

With the addition of TOR, you not only perform partition of trust with 4 parties, but you also establish new circuits, so that the parties are not known in advance, and each party ignores at least one other party (for example, with TOR over VPN: VPN server does not know TOR relay and TOR exit-node; TOR exit-node does not know VPN server and TOR entry, etc.). 

 

Therefore, once again everything goes down to the basic questions: who can your adversary be? What is the value of your information, in terms of resources that an adversary can reasonably be ready to spend to disclose your identity?

 

I also think connecting to Tor and then airVPN could be dangerous as in your ISP can then see your connecting to Tor network and then all of a sudden your encrypted,  this may cause alarm bells id imagine !

 

True, this depends on which country you live in. If TOR usage triggers investigations, maybe it's better to try TOR over VPN.

 

Kind regards

[Guest summoner23]

Does any one have a tutorial for setting up two OPENVPN tunnels on the same PC?