Data stored on servers, and IP addresses

[RABC123 0]

I have a two part question. The first is about this part of the privacy notes:

Although the Iridium servers may be located in various European Union countries, all those servers and all data collected by those servers are subject to this "AirVPN Privacy Notice and Terms" and are compliant to the standards and requirements set by Directives 95/46/EC ("Data Protection"), 2002/58/EC ("privacy on electronic communications") and the best practices recommended by the EU Art. 29 Working Party and the EDPS (European Data Protection Supervisor).

What is the "data collected by those servers", and how long is that data stored for?

The second part is about IP addresses. I have connected to the same server multiple times and had the same IP address - is this static, and does everyone that connects to that server appear to have the same IP address?

I have tried many different VPN services over the past year, and yours is my favourite so far, so thank you.

[Staff 10114]

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I have a two part question. The first is about this part of the privacy notes:

Although the Iridium servers may be located in various European Union countries, all those servers and all data collected by those servers are subject to this "AirVPN Privacy Notice and Terms" and are compliant to the standards and requirements set by Directives 95/46/EC ("Data Protection"), 2002/58/EC ("privacy on electronic communications") and the best practices recommended by the EU Art. 29 Working Party and the EDPS (European Data Protection Supervisor).

What is the "data collected by those servers", and how long is that data stored for?

Hello!

Stored information (not on VPN servers, but on a backend server) are:

- your login name

- your name as entered in the subscription

- your password (encrypted)

- date and time of account subscription

- date and time of last login on the website

- date and time of account expiration

- subscribed plan type (if any)

- e-mail address associated with the account

- forwarded ports linked to the account (if any)

The above information are provided by you and must be stored in order to provide the service. Without them, you could not even log in.

We recommend not to put in your account data any information which can be exploited to disclose you real identity. For example, do no put your real name, do not use an e-mail address which can be linked to your real identity. We don't check e-mail validity, but you might need a working e-mail in case you need to reset your password, receive support or any other private communication from us.

If you enable the connections statistics, further stored data (deletable whenever you wish) are:

- time and duration of connection to a VPN server (not specified which one)

- total uploaded and downloaded bytes

- uploaded and downloaded bytes of last 50 sessions

IP addresses are not stored, not even if you enable the sessions statistics.

The above information can be deleted upon simple written request.

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The second part is about IP addresses. I have connected to the same server multiple times and had the same IP address - is this static, and does everyone that connects to that server appear to have the same IP address?

Yes. Please note that each server has different entry-IP and exit-IP addresses.

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I have tried many different VPN services over the past year, and yours is my favourite so far, so thank you.

Thank you!

Please do not hesitate to contact us for any further information.

Kind regards

[emx620 0]

Helllo. I see you recommend to not use an email address or name that can trace back to my real identity. If I go and change my name and/or email address, and update my account, will you guys still have any logs or information connecting back to my original information?

Thanks.

[Staff 10114]

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Helllo. I see you recommend to not use an email address or name that can trace back to my real identity. If I go and change my name and/or email address, and update my account, will you guys still have any logs or information connecting back to my original information?

Thanks.

Hello!

No, they would be no more available on our servers. However, the system would not allow you to do that. If you think that your account is not ok, probably it's better to ask us to delete it and then re-start with a new one.

Feel free to contact us in private for further details (menu "Support"->"Contact us").

Kind regards

[shiro21 4]

Excellent information! I am liking AirVPN's transparency more and more everyday!

I have some other questions regarding privacy and I hope TC doesn't mind me asking in this thread.

Does AirVPN maintain payment transactions? In other words, does AirVPN keep track of what payment method was used by individual accounts? If forced to, would AirVPN be able to look up, say, a Paypal transaction linked to an account and find out the owner of the account?

Does AirVPN offer DNS look-ups?

[Staff 10114]

  Quote

Excellent information! I am liking AirVPN's transparency more and more everyday!

I have some other questions regarding privacy and I hope TC doesn't mind me asking in this thread.

Does AirVPN maintain payment transactions? In other words, does AirVPN keep track of what payment method was used by individual accounts? If forced to, would AirVPN be able to look up, say, a Paypal transaction linked to an account and find out the owner of the account?

Hello!

Yes, the privacy legal responsible person has the ability to make such correlation. If he hadn't, we could not offer a refund policy. However, he has not the ability to correlate any account with any VPN usage, not even with which server the account has been used for connections.

On top of that, keep in mind that PayPal transactions remain stored "forever" (just like any bank transaction), you can't delete them. The transactions proves just that you are an Air customer.

Please use Bitcoin if you want to make such correlations impossible.

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Does AirVPN offer DNS look-ups?

Can you please elaborate?

Kind regards

[shiro21 4]

What I meant was that while connected to VPN and my computer does a DNS lookup to resolve URLs, does it use whatever DNS servers set on my router or uses the VPN servers?

In other words, if I left my DNS servers on my router to the default of my ISP, well my ISP know what sites I'm trying to resolve or will it use whatever DNS servers the VPN servers have set?

My router is set to use OpenDNS servers but I figured it'd be good to know for other users.

[Staff 10114]

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What I meant was that while connected to VPN and my computer does a DNS lookup to resolve URLs, does it use whatever DNS servers set on my router or uses the VPN servers?

In other words, if I left my DNS servers on my router to the default of my ISP, well my ISP know what sites I'm trying to resolve or will it use whatever DNS servers the VPN servers have set?

My router is set to use OpenDNS servers but I figured it'd be good to know for other users.

Hello!

It depends on your network configuration. If you make the connection through a computer and you accept the routes pushed by our servers, you should have no DNS leak, and your computer should use no more the router DNS. Your router will not even know your traffic payload and real sources and destinations, so it can't discern DNS queries among all the packets.

Watch out for DNS leaks directly from your computer, if they are sent out unencrypted your provider may know which domain names you communicate with, potentially even if you don't use their DNS.

See here for VPN DNS resolution:

https://airvpn.org/specs

Using VPN DNS will allow you to bypass USA ICE censorship in several cases.

You'll find in the forum several suggestions to prevent DNS leaks. When connected to the VPN, check whether you have DNS leaks with this tool:

http://www.dnsleaktest.com

Kind regards

[Miracles 0]

  On 4/2/2012 at 9:48 AM, Staff said:

 

Hello!

 

Yes, the privacy legal responsible person has the ability to make such correlation. If he hadn't, we could not offer a refund policy. However, he has not the ability to correlate any account with any VPN usage, not even with which server the account has been used for connections.

 

On top of that, keep in mind that PayPal transactions remain stored "forever" (just like any bank transaction), you can't delete them. The transactions proves just that you are an Air customer.

 

Please use Bitcoin if you want to make such correlations impossible.

 

 

Can you please elaborate?

 

Kind regards

Hello,
as your privacy policy in 2023 says

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Air does not store Instant Payment Notifications, therefore if a payment processor sends an Instant Payment Notification which includes personal data of the customer this will not affect the privacy of that customer in Air system.

is it correct to assume that this changed, and AirVPN, including the privacy legal responsible person, now cannot anymore connect an account with the payment transaction after the payment?

[Staff 10114]

@Miracles

Hello!

Watch out, the mentioned data are not stored in the VPN system, but they are stored in PayPal servers and can be accessed by the account holders while entering the account. In this way it's still possible to verify through the transaction ID and deliver a refund, for example. Account holders can not delete such data and PayPal must preserve them for several years according to the legal frameworks concerning banks, payment processors, financial entities in general, anti money-laundering rules, of the countries PayPal operates in.

With that said, we confirm that it's impossible, even for the data processor, to correlate any account with any VPN usage, not even with which server the account has been used for connections and we also confirm the validity of the ToS and the Privacy Notice.

Kind regards