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Ive read this over at a professional IT Service , its about Airvpns privacy policies, read!

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Hello,

 

we have read that "review". We reserve the right to reply, therefore our comments follow.

 

 

professional IT server sites point of view

 

That's not exact. You fail to mention that iVPN is a VPN service competitor.

 

 

AirVPN is VPN service started by a “small group of activists” in 2010 and is based in the Netherlands.

 

False, Air is based in Italy as clearly stated in the Privacy Notice.

 

“Air servers and software procedures acquire only personal data which are strictly necessary for the technical functioning of the service, for example IP address. These data are not collected to identify, through elaboration or any other technique, users’ personal identities. These data are not transmitted to third parties. “

We’re lacking specifics here. In particular, AirVPN does not say how the IP address is stored and if it is anonymised.

 

False: "These data are not collected to identify, through elaboration or any other technique" has an unequivocal legal meaning in the EU. It means that personal data, including IP addresses (regardless of the debate whether an IP address is a personal data or not), are not collected at all and in any way. Therefore not only we legally state that they are not stored when a client accesses a VPN service, but we also say that they are not even sent to third-parties WHILE a client is connected to a VPN server, which is a higher privacy condition. It seems, to say the least, bizarre that a higher privacy protection policy is interpreted as a lower one.

 

“Data transmission is performed between Air servers network exclusively in order to erogate efficiently the AirVPN service. Data are deleted as soon as they are no more necessary for such purposes.”

Again, AirVPN needs to be more specific and say exactly how long it retains data for. “Data are deleted as soon as they are no more necessary for such purposes” is far to vague to be taken seriously and there is no mention of data retention periods anywhere in the privacy policy.

 

Once again, the sentence has a very precise legal meaning in the EU. The service is erogated when a client is connected, therefore when a client is disconnected the service is not erogated, ergo when a client disconnects those data are no more on the servers and the data retention period is, in the worst case, the timeout period (up to 60 seconds), in the best case 0 seconds.

 

 

AirVPN doesn’t mention anything regarding cookies, affiliates and ad data.

 

False. The Privacy Notice states, since three years ago:

 

 

When users connect to AirVPN Virtual Private Network, no cookies are stored on their system.

 

And also:

 

 

On the contrary, when users access AirVPN website (for example to enter the forum) cookies are stored on their systems in order to make possible the access to such additional services. Cookies are temporary; what's more, they can be deleted by the users whenever they wish. Under no circumstance Air uses cookies to track users or to collect any other data.

 

This fact alone shows that iVPN either did not even read our documents, or the writer(s) voluntarily lied.

 

Additionally, we don't need to cite ads or affiliates because: we have no ads and we don't plan to host any ad; and affiliates (if any) are totally separated from the system and can't access in any way any personal data, according to our Privacy Notice (see again above: data are not transmitted to third parties).

 

 

But AirVPN also doesn’t mention how it responds to DMCA notices

 

That's true and IT MUST BE SO. We will never mention how we "respond" to laws that are outside our jurisdiction and that are therefore inapplicable, simply because we are not forced to and we MUST NOT comply (and of course we must not even "respond") to such laws. An USA Act "has jurisdiction" on the USA. We are not subject to every single law existing in the world and we will NEVER mention them as if we recognized their validity. Doing so would imply an utter incompetence on the legal field. Ironically, we would like to ask to iVPN staff why they do not state in their policy how they "respond" to every single law in the world which makes VPN business illegal.

 

 

AirVPN’s policy uses somewhat broken English (what does “erogate” mean exactly in this context?).

 

Broken English or illiterate iVPN reviewer? We recommend iVPN people to open a dictionary, for example the Webster dictionary, and search for "erogate", which means "give, lay out, provide, deal out".

 

And about you, centerc3290=@3, why don't you actually read our Tos and Privacy Notice, instead of relying on a COMPETITOR review, spreading it as a review "from IT professionals"? Use your own brain!

 

Kind regards

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I read the so-called review and I very much appreciate the nature and tone of the response from the Air staff. It exuded passion about what and why they are here. This response tells me they are adament about our right to privacy, and even unwarranted searches. The more I learn, especially in light of the political climate in the world today, the more I appreciate the knowledge, commitment and passion of the Air Staff to defend our individual rights in this regard.

 

Thank you very much,

 

L


Laurelli

<my rant>Privacy is a right and expectation that the citizens of the world once enjoyed, but took for granted, and have lost. Today we are made to believe that we only need privacy if we are doing something wrong. I do not believe this lie. Today we are told by our governments that we can have no expectations of privacy, for our own "safety" and for "the greater good" of society. Personally, I don't need a big brother to protect me, and I will NEVER choose to surrender my rights and my liberties for so-called safety and security from a boogie man. I will continue to use services, such as AirVpn, in order to exercise my right and expectation of privacy. Would that the sheep would learn.</end rant>

 

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Another troll from a competitor more than likely, IVPN, how dangerous is this company IVPN if they pull this sort of pathetic stunt, wouldnt touch them with a 40 foot barge pole.

 

Thanks AirVPN

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...

But AirVPN also doesn’t mention how it responds to DMCA notices

 

That's true and IT MUST BE SO. We will never mention how we "respond" to laws that are outside our jurisdiction and that are therefore inapplicable, simply because we are not forced to and we MUST NOT comply (and of course we must not even "respond") to such laws. An USA Act "has jurisdiction" on the USA. We are not subject to every single law existing in the world and we will NEVER mention them as if we recognized their validity. Doing so would imply an utter incompetence on the legal field. Ironically, we would like to ask to iVPN staff why they do not state in their policy how they "respond" to every single law in the world which makes VPN business illegal.

...

 

 

I have not looked at iVPN at all. But I looked at a lot of VPN providers in my search for one that would allow me to seed effectively (i.e. port forwarding), and unfortunately tried a few real dogs. AirVPN was the only one I found that was usable for seeding. I did encounter one that claimed to support port forwarding for P2P, but their port forwarding was completely unusable in reality. I have to believe that there was at least one person working there who knew this. So I can only conclude that this was a deliberate attempt to mislead.

 

So why then when there is clearly a demand for this do VPN providers refuse to address the demand (although some pretend to in order to suck people in)? I think it must be fear. I think the comment above about how AirVPN would respond to DMCA requests attests to the gutlessness of the people running most VPN providers. They simply cannot believe that someone else might have more courage than them.

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I'm ashamed of myself for even considering iVPN when I was looking for a provider. Just look at their rebuttal to AirVPN's explanations; instead of admitting that the article was a sham, iVPN goes on the attack again for AirVPN supposedly not being clear enough.

 

Not clear enough? AirVPN's responses to TorrentFreak's 2013 questionnaire told me all I needed to know.

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Hello,

 

we have read that "review". We reserve the right to reply, therefore our comments follow.

 

Great, in depth reply. That 'review' is a complete joke to begin with, though.

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I'm not a P2P user but I was curious; on their "Why IVPN" page: https://www.ivpn.net/whyivpn

 

It says,

 

4. We're not a P2P downloading service. Do this mean they are inspecting the customer's packets?

 

If so, is that common amongst VPN Providers?

 

Or is it a matter of not forwarding ports?

 

Hello,

 

technically this is a very interesting question. In order to block p2p traffic in advance, disabling port forwarding is not enough. For example, torrent clients can work without port forwarding behind a NAT, with a performance hit and some limitations due to inability to receive incoming connections (so you can't start seeding for example, but this problem is not relevant for many users).

 

Blocking outbound and inbound ports commonly used for p2p is of course ineffective. With DHT, it's also ineffective to block access to trackers.

 

Blocking a wide range of outbound ports is a more realistic option, but again the risk is blocking many applications and protocols (experimental or not), not to mention that a block on outbound ports would be one of the most offensive behaviors against Net Neutrality and against an open Internet. What if some service on the Internet is listening to one of the blocked ports? The block would render the service unreachable.

 

The most effective way would be implementing Deep Packet Inspection, but in this case the provider would block also perfectly legitimate p2p traffic and would potentially risk some important collateral damages as well, for example a block of some VoIP applications, not to talk about remarkable, additional system load, unless expensive dedicated to DPI hardware is employed, which would inevitably require higher prices to the customers (with the absurd paradox that they would pay more to get blocked!).

 

In practice, according to users reports and interviews with VPN administrators, the most common method is to forbid "illegal" p2p on the Terms of Service and logging customers activity (simple logging, no DPI or SPI is required). Then, if those providers receive an alleged copyright infringement notice, they correlate (with the time stamps, IP and port reported on the notice) the allegedly infringing account and disable it, without any verification, see for example HideMyAss interview by schoolofprivacy.eu:

 

> and how do you generally handle requests from law enforcement and copyright agencies?

In case we receive any DMCA complains [sic] we locate and suspend the account which was originating the traffic in question and suspend it.

 

http://schoolofprivacy.eu/post/41190513699/short-interview-with-hide-my-ass (as a side note, this is an enlightening interview: if you know a little about OpenVPN and cipher suites, you will see that the interviewed HMA person does not even know what he/she is talking about when he/she answers to the question "What type of encryption do you use?" - which is quite worrying from someone who bases the most important part of a service on encryption).

 

Kind regards

pj

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I'm not a P2P user but I was curious; on their "Why IVPN" page: https://www.ivpn.net/whyivpn

 

It says,

 

4. We're not a P2P downloading service.

 

How do they accomplish that, Is it a matter of them not forwarding ports?

 

How can a VPN provider call itself a provider if it can't offer p2p services ?

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I'm not a P2P user but I was curious; on their "Why IVPN" page: https://www.ivpn.net/whyivpn

 

It says,

 

4. We're not a P2P downloading service.

 

How do they accomplish that, Is it a matter of them not forwarding ports?

 

How can a VPN provider call itself a provider if it can't offer p2p services ?

 

There's a difference in "providing p2p service" like a tracker and "facilitating port forwarding" to get connected to a tracker.

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There's a difference in "providing p2p service" like a tracker and "facilitating port forwarding" to get connected to a tracker.

 

Hello,

 

port forwarding has nothing to do with connecting to a Bittorrent tracker. The tracker is contacted by the torrent client via http or udp and obviously the operation does not need any port forwarding on the client side.

 

Port forwarding is a way to make a service that's running on a client machine behind the VPN NAT reachable from the outside. Please see our FAQ answers for more information.

 

Kind regards

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