You may have heard that government agencies are watching every step you make online. And yes, you’re right, as we have seen from Edward Snowden’s revelations. The NSA would like to know literally every single thing we do online. Sure, part of it is for our own safety, but it is impeding our privacy and we don’t like that. Luckily a VPN can help, which brings us to our topic du jour – can police track VPN usage?
How police track users on the internet?
It all comes to the IP address which is provided to you by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). The company you’re connecting to the Internet has a limited number of IP addresses so it’s relatively easy for the authorities to know which ISP or mobile operator you’re using to “get online.”
From there, all they need is a court order to reveal the other details, such as where that IP address has been assigned to — to which user — and they can pinpoint to you.
The situation is similar when you’re accessing the Internet from your smartphone — the authorities get a court order to obtain information about the user and his/her whereabouts from the carrier.
In some countries, ISPs — which as we’ve noted above also include mobile operators — are forced by law to keep their logs for some time, sometimes even a few years. This is a vast pool of data authorities can tap into when they need to solve some serious crime. For the rest of us, it’s another proof that our privacy is under siege.
A VPN keeps you protected
By connecting to a VPN server, you get a new IP address that is provided to you by the VPN service (rather than your ISP). Now, when someone wants to track you, he/she can’t get your real IP address but the one of the VPN server, which BTW can operate with multiple IP addresses.
Furthermore, if we’re talking about a zero-logs VPN service provider, there is no way for any government authority to track you down. They may discover that you have been using a VPN service — cause some governments keep track of their IP addresses — and that’s it. Because all online traffic with VPN is encrypted, they can’t even know what you have been accessing online.
In the more strict regimes, the government may decide to pay a “visit” to the VPN provider’s office and “ask” for permission to access their servers. Again, if there are no logs to tap into, they will leave empty-handed. This is the reason why you should go for the VPN service that has conducted a third-party audit of its zero-logs policy — which is what most top VPNs did.
Police have more important things to do
The most important thing to realize is that the police has more important things to do rather than check who’s been accessing US Netflix from Asia or some related issue. That, in case you wonder, is one of the top use cases for VPN services. Other popular use cases include being anonymous — i.e. not letting major corporations know everything you do online — torrenting, bypassing local Internet restrictions, and so on.
Neither of these is something police want to be involved in. For serious criminals using VPNs for their nasty activities, there are dedicated agencies but even they are having a hard time tracking VPN users.
Furthermore, many VPN providers are located in countries where there is little to no international jurisdiction. In other words, they won’t provide any access to authorities with a regular US court order.
So unless we’re talking about a multi-million dollar violation, you are good to go with a VPN, knowing that your privacy is well protected.
Zero logs policy is a must
With all being said, you may think why bother with a zero-logs VPN service. We ask the opposite – why not when it comes included with most of the top VPN providers. Why settle for a second-place service when you can have the best of the best for just a few dollars more.
The way I see it, it is my privacy and I don’t want to take it lightly. Therefore, I roll with the best VPN the money can buy. And I suggest you do that, as well. 😉