As part of the endorsement arrangement, the Pirate Party is reassured that the service will only ever log and retain the bare minimum required by UK law and, will never voluntarily provide any information to authorities.

Maybe I'm being naive, or just plain daft, but that comment above is pretty much what I'd expect my ISP to do - minimal amount of snooping and no information handed across to any third parties (including the government) without either my explicit consent or a court order.

Indeed, I expect this would in the end make it easier for the authorities as they might only have to ask this company for user details logged for an offending IP rather than bother general purpose ISPs. So yes, all pirates please go and use this service so that you're easier to find and those of us obeying the law can go about our business with ultimately less disruption.

crossy

As part of the endorsement arrangement, the Pirate Party is reassured that the service will only ever log and retain the bare minimum required by UK law and, will never voluntarily provide any information to authorities.

Maybe I'm being naive, or just plain daft, but that comment above is pretty much what I'd expect my ISP to do - minimal amount of snooping and no information handed across to any third parties (including the government) without either my explicit consent or a court order.

Yeah you're being naive (understandably, perhaps).

kalniel
Indeed, I expect this would in the end make it easier for the authorities as they might only have to ask this company for user details logged for an offending IP rather than bother general purpose ISPs. So yes, all pirates please go and use this service so that you're easier to find and those of us obeying the law can go about our business with ultimately less disruption.

No, ha ha. I'm not sure you understand how VPN works (since you mentioned offending IP), or quite how unnecessarily compliant the average ISP is with the authorities (or just anyone that feels like complaining, e.g. a rightsholder). Good luck if and when some **AA member mistakenly sticks your IP on a list during one of their regular mass complaint mailings and your ISP rolls over without question.

crossy
Maybe I'm being naive, or just plain daft, but that comment above is pretty much what I'd expect my ISP to do - minimal amount of snooping and no information handed across to any third parties (including the government) without either my explicit consent or a court order.

The government/Ofcom are asking UK ISPs to build their infrastructure in a way that can monitor more data with 2014 in sight. Whilst we expect this from ISPs now, come 2014, this may not be the case. Likewise, warning letters are going to be triggered by ISPs seeing certain kinds of traffic, which a VPN may mask and VPNs of course are widely used for 100% legitimate use.

Scribe
Likewise, warning letters are going to be triggered by ISPs seeing certain kinds of traffic, which a VPN may mask and VPNs of course are widely used for 100% legitimate use.

Then the more of us who sign-up the better as it will cause inconvenience and cost issues, surely?

I have nothing to hide on my interweb use but this kind of snooping really gets my goat.

Scribe
The government/Ofcom are asking UK ISPs to build their infrastructure in a way that can monitor more data with 2014 in sight. Whilst we expect this from ISPs now, come 2014, this may not be the case. Likewise, warning letters are going to be triggered by ISPs seeing certain kinds of traffic, which a VPN may mask and VPNs of course are widely used for 100% legitimate use.

Hmm, yes it's that kind of “we're bored so we'll go and spy on someone” mentality that's worrying me - and no I'm not being paranoid, a couple of council CCTV operators had that quote attributed to them.

And what's the betting that their “suspicious traffic” can be generated by legitimate activities (cynic mode on) in which case it's going to be “fun” proving that you're not downloading films/music etc.

Of course - as you point out - if they make use of a VPN “suspicious activity” then I (and other home-based workers) am/are in for an “interesting” period to say the least.

I tried BTGuard's open VPN for a month recently but it was like surfing on 56k dial up. I can only assume it was so slow because their servers were in the States.

HMA Pro VPN is the best on offer at the mo.

http://hidemyass.com/vpn/

saltyzip
HMA Pro VPN is the best on offer at the mo.

http://hidemyass.com/vpn/

Ermm….no they are not.

http://blog.hidemyass.com/2011/09/23/lulzsec-fiasco/
http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anonymity-seriously-111007/

Hi,

Thank you for contacting us. Firstly, the media is over reacting and exaggerating the fact that we cooperated with law enforcement agencies where we being a legitimate company being issued a UK court order on this lulzsec incident.

We DID NOT sell any infos to any party. We are not paying anyone nor anyone is paying to release information. May i know were did you read about us selling off information anyway?

We ONLY store logs of your original IP, date and time of connection. We DO NOT store any records on your internet activities as all the data transferred through the tunnel is encrypted anyway, we have no idea what are you accessing.

You have to understand that what we did was helping law enforcement agencies in hunting down a cyber criminal which played a part in hacking the Sony Playstation Network, hacking into NATO military servers, defacing British newspaper The Sun and The times and many more activities which are deemed illegal and violate the law which governed the internet. A valid UK court order was being issued to us and that is only the right thing to do.

For your info, he use of VPN does not allow one to perform illegal activities. And I can guarantee you that all VPN providers keep logs, if they claimed that they do not, they are seriously misleading you. These logs are for us to locate abusive users (spamming, bots, file sharing complaints etc etc) to prevent our VPN servers from going down due to these abuses. It is very naive for one to think that by paying $11/month you will get total anonymity where you can abuse the service however they like and performing illegal activities behind a VPN.

There is nothing to ‘fight’ against this case as it is clearly a violation of laws in which we are a legitimate company and we DO NOT protect criminals. If we do, what's the difference are we compared to these cyber criminals?

You might want to read our blog on this entire Lulzsec fiasco: http://blog.hidemyass.com/2011…

Regards,
Joshua
HMA! Team

To make it crystal clear, I do not support Lulzsec or their activities. But it is clear that HMA keep enough information to be able to help law enforcement. Do you not see the problem there? People want a VPN to help try and keep their privacy. If HMA has enough info to pass onto any law agency through their dodgy laws they are implementing, you're not protected.

HMA is a jokers VPN.

Use a service like Mulvad: http://mullvad.net/en/faq.php#data_retention

Privacy is a universal right.

We don't tell anyone anything.

We don't log our users' activities.

When Swedish law requires us to divulge information about our customers we make sure not to have that information stored, so that we have nothing to give out.

However, credit card payments and bank transfers leave records. These are kept by the banks and card companies and can't be erased by us. To pay anonymously, use cash or Bitcoin with proper anonymisation.

edit - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/26/hidemyass_lulzsec_controversy/

The service said it carries out session-logging, recording the time a customers logs onto and disconnects from the service as well as the IP addresses he or she connects to.

That's awful for a VPN service that's claiming privacy. A VPN “privacy” service should not be logging either the time you connect / disconnect….and to log your IP? Jokers.

Very disappointed by the Pirate Party to be fair. They are totally missing the point of a VPN.

Currently this service doesn't offer that much other than hiding your IP to the places you're visiting. If the service has to abide by UK law, then they are still at the mercy of the UK courts.

The entire reason people like myself are using VPNs more and more is because of the privacy laws that are being brought in. If they are in the UK, it becomes nothing more than an encrypted link to another computer.

If you have a reasonable expectation of privacy then you need to route your traffic to a country that has decent privacy laws sadly.