VPN services are a great tool for people who want to increase their privacy and security online.
While most people use them for legitimate purposes, VPNs are also frequently linked to nefarious activity, as criminals prefer to stay anonymous online too.
As a result, VPNs regularly come up when police investigate online crime. This is also what appears to have happened with two servers that were leased by VPN provider Perfect Privacy.
A few days ago the company informed its customers that two of its servers had been seized by the police in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The authorities went directly to the hosting company I3D and the VPN provider itself wasn’t contacted by law enforcement.
“Currently we have no further information since the responsible law enforcement agency did not get in touch with us directly, we were merely informed by our hoster,” Perfect Privacy says.
Despite losing control over two servers, Perfect Privacy assures its customers that no personally identifiable data is present on the seized hardware. Like many other VPNs, the company maintains a strict no-logging policy.
“Since we are not logging any data there is currently no reason to believe that any user data was compromised,” the VPN provider says.
TorrentFreak reached out to I3D, who told us that they can’t comment on any specifics. However, the hoster stresses that it handles these type of requests in compliance with the law, while keeping the interests of their customers in mind.
“When the Dutch police contact us with a subpoena, we work with them in a professional manner and ensure their request and our responses are in compliance with the Dutch law,” I3D informs us.
“We think with the affected customer as well, for example by making temporary capacity available so the customer does not suffer extended downtime during the investigation.”
Perfect Privacy confirms that they are happy with how I3D handled this issue. Two replacement servers were quickly put in place meaning that the seizures didn’t result in any significant downtime.
In any case, it is good to see that the provider in question is being open about what happened. Unfortunately, that’s not always obvious for companies in this position.
