VPN lied and kept logs!

A Massachusetts man was arrested late last week on suspicion of conducting a cyberstalking campaign against a female former roommate, her friends, and family. Court documents reveal that logs, obtained by the FBI from privacy service PureVPN, helped the prosecution. Until now, PureVPN had always maintained it carried no logs - almost.

https://torrentfreak.com/purevpn-logs-helped-fbi-net-alleged-cyberstalker-171009/

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Comments

alias454

Interesting.
Somewhat ironically, this summer Lin took to Twitter to criticize VPN provider IPVanish (which is not involved in the case) over its no-logging claims.

“There is no such thing as a VPN that doesn’t keep logs,” Lin said. “If they can limit your connections or track bandwidth usage, they keep logs.”

Or, in the case of PureVPN, if they log a connection time and a source IP address, that could be enough to raise the suspicions of the FBI and boost what already appears to be a pretty strong case.

mbarrett

You may want a VPN because you don't trust the government looking over your shoulder, but how much trust do you place in your VPN provider?

jm0202

yes, but if you read the affidavit, the guy was stalking a girl for about 1 year... he gave enough time to anyone to track him lol

mikey88

This is huge and will put some VPN providers out of business.

Queue

Received a promotion from PureVPN for 80 dollar lifetime subscription haha.

cyberguypr

You guys are totally overreacting to this. The feature used here is called Forward Balance Indexing log storage, also known as FBI log storage. It's basically log backups for free so be grateful

mikey88

cyberguypr wrote: »

You guys are totally overreacting to this. The feature used here is called Forward Balance Indexing log storage, also known as FBI log storage. It's basically log backups for free so be grateful

Good one. I guess if you got Feds after you it's a different ball game. The point here is 1. Don't rely on some internet company to keep you anonymous.
2. If involved with illegal activities, at least know what you're doing. (for ex: proper hdd format) and 3. NSA/Feds are better hack0rz than you.

slinuxuzer

mikey88 wrote: »

Good one. I guess if you got Feds after you it's a different ball game. The point here is 1. Don't rely on some internet company to keep you anonymous.
2. If involved with illegal activities, at least know what you're doing. (for ex: proper hdd format) and 3. NSA/Feds are better hack0rz than you.

Either that, or don't be a creeper.

jm0202

However there some VPNs that claim they have all your info in memory and do not write anything to disk, thus not saving logs

NuclearBeavis

I'm not sure how anyone thinks they can truly be anonymous. If what you're doing is bad enough, they'll find you.

x12319x

whats the best vpn for security reasons

Moldygr33nb3an

Use an out of country VPN provider. They have many that the US does not have any jurisdiction over, + cryptocurrency + Tor = Solid. That said, i'll defer back to what mbarrett asked.

TechGromit

Moldygr33nb3an wrote: »

Use an out of country VPN provider. They have many that the US does not have any jurisdiction over, + cryptocurrency + Tor = Solid. That said, i'll defer back to what mbarrett asked.

I agree with this, the VPN I use is located in UK. No US company will be willing to stand up against the justice department for long. Especially for just one user, actually I think most VPN providers domestic or foreign would be more than happy to record the logs for a user or two to avoid the hassle by the US government, it's when the US demands all logs from all users when they will give them push back.

DatabaseHead

mikey88 wrote: »

This is huge and will put some VPN providers out of business.

Good they should be.

UnixGuy

Wait can someone explain to me what is a Cyberstalking campaign?

so he was looking at his former roommate facebook for example?

(asking for a friend)

... j/k

TechGromit

UnixGuy wrote: »

Wait can someone explain to me what is a Cyberstalking campaign?

so he was looking at his former roommate facebook for example?

That's a pretty good question, You can restrict that the public sees on your facebook profile, only friends can read and see your posts. Some cases i read, a someone posts photos and a online dating profile for another person without there knowledge (usually a female) and there email, phone or even address gets spammed with people showing up to have sex with them. Phone numbers and email addresses are easily changed, but it's not always convenient to move, not to mention, it's pretty easy to obtain the person's new address, phone and email from sources on the internet. i would imagine this one thing alone would make anyone's life a living hell. I even read cases where the "woman" guys were communicating with the dating site online told them they have R*** fantasies, so you can imagine how dangerous it becomes for an unsuspecting woman get jumped by a guy because he thinks she's into the R*** fantasy.

UnixGuy

@TechGromit I don't think I fully understand your comment, you mean someone takes a screen shot of another person's Tinder profile and posting it on facebook? that's a cyberstalking campaign? The whole thing seems like a subjective thing, because dating profiles aren't really private data, but what do I know. I don't use online dating so I don't know enough about it

Ertaz

UnixGuy wrote: »

@TechGromit I don't think I fully understand your comment, you mean someone takes a screen shot of another person's Tinder profile and posting it on facebook? that's a cyberstalking campaign? The whole thing seems like a subjective thing, because dating profiles aren't really private data, but what do I know. I don't use online dating so I don't know enough about it

What I believe he’s saying is that someone steals info and pictures from an improperly secured fb profile and uses it to create an online dating profile.

UnixGuy

Ertaz wrote: »

What I believe he’s saying is that someone steals info and pictures from an improperly secured fb profile and uses it to create an online dating profile.

ohh got ya!