Like a few other VPNs do, IPVanish also did extra work to prove to its clients and the entire world that they take their users’ privacy and security seriously.
The popular VPN service offers a “no logs” service which means they do not log or store any data about your connections or your activity. In other words, when you’re using IPVanish, they will have no idea where or how you’re connecting to the internet or what you are doing online.
To that end, the company announced that it had its technology and no-log privacy practices audited and certified by Leviathan, a highly respected cybersecurity consulting firm.
The auditing process…
As part of the process, Leviathan Security Group was provided with “unprecedented access” to the IPVanish team, documentation, and technology. Leviathan then conducted interviews with staff responsible for maintaining the VPN servers, inspected the system configurations and technical documentation, and assessed the server deployment procedures.
Test traffic exercises were used to evaluate connection handling and generate potentially-logged data. This included forward and reverse DNS hostname lookups, traffic addressed to uncommon UDP and TCP ports, SMTP traffic, HTTP traffic, and TLS negotiations. A production endpoint server was also made available to the security research firm for exhaustive examination in which evidence of the test traffic exercises could not be found.
In the end, the independent auditor confirmed that IPVanish was in compliance with its publicly available Privacy Policy, which guarantees that they do not retain data about the content or destination of customer sessions. The full report can be obtained by contacting IPVanish.
The company says this audit is a testament to their “transparency as a service and continued dedication to consumer data protection.”
IPVanish doesn’t log a thing…
As explained in the Privacy Policy, IPVanish doesn’t save or monitor their users’ browsing activity, such as what websites they visit while connected to the VPN service. But more specifically, IPVanish does not log:
- The content of your internet traffic or locations of your online destinations
- Your search histories and the websites you log into
- The apps you’re using
- Your content or destinations of your upload and download activity
- The content or source of the online streams you’re watching
IPVanish uses minimal diagnostic data in order to be a functional service for its customers, but none of that is identifiable information. And you can check which data that is and what they’re doing with it from IPVanish’s privacy policy.
The company ends the announcement by reminding us that audits by trusted third-party experts are meant to provide independent verification of the promises VPN providers (and other companies) make to customers. We couldn’t agree more.
Pros
Cons
- One the best VPNs for torrenting
- Works well with Netflix
- Simple setup on all popular devices
- Strict zero-logs policy
- Doesn't work with BBC iPlayer
- Doesn't work in China