"No-Log" VPN Turns Over Logs on Kiddie pr0nist

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Amazingly enough, a company by the name of IPVanish, a VPN provider that claimed for years that it had a strict no-logging policy, was subpoenaed by Homeland security in a kiddie pr0n case, and did very much have logs, actually very specific usage logs, and turned those over to investigators. But don't worry, they don't log that any more nowadays.

Our lawyers told us this a long time ago, "The "E" in email does not stand for "electronic," its stands for "evidence." Something I have never forgotten, and you probably should not either when it comes to anything electronic.

In a response to HSI, Highwinds provided information which allowed HSI to identify the suspect connecting to the VPN server, connecting to the IRC server, and then disconnecting from the VPN server. Highwinds also handed over the suspect’s name (Vincent Gevirtz), his email address, plus details of his VPN subscription.

Also made available to HSI was Gevirtz’s real IP address (Comcast 50.178.206.161) “as well as dates and times [he] connected to, and disconnected from, the IRC network,” times which coincided with the activity being investigated by HSI.
 
Not "No Logs", a "no logging policy", they are different. The former being a direct statement claiming they do not keep logs, the latter states they have a policy to not keep logs they make no statement as to weather they follow that policy. And if they have a policy it may be they keep no logs "unless" there are a number of loop holes that can be placed into a policy, policies are long worded documents and the legal definition of "strict" in regards to policies is pretty broad and usually refers to the number of contingencies built into it.
 
So.. what's the odds he is going to try and sue the VPN for misleading and false advertising? Gotta lot of time in the klink to work out the legal details.
 
I'm sure it was an ongoing thing. No logs. Unless 'asked' (told) by a federal agency to do so. So, it might not be common practice for logging, but they can if they have to.
 
karma is a b. VPN is good to get around caps, oppression, shady isp and controlling governments but FU if you want to wank it to kids creepers.
 
I was just thinking to myself that I didn't have to worry about such things, as I don't do anything that would normally be harmful to others, and thus would not be illegal, but then I realized that there are so many laws and regulations that I'm probably unknowingly offending something that people would find innocuous, but law makers have found reason to make illegal. So many in the government are just out to make things illegal so they can make us all law offenders. Don't assume that just because you aren't evil and don't go around hurting people that you haven't fallen afoul of some law somewhere.
 
oROEchimaru said:
karma is a b. VPN is good to get around caps, oppression, shady isp and controlling governments but FU if you want to wank it to kids creepers.
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Agreed, but if a controlling government can get this info then they can get at whatever you don't want them to see. This same corporate behavior could cause an honest whistle-blower to disappear. Two wrongs make a right in this case, but not always.
 
oROEchimaru said:
karma is a b. VPN is good to get around caps, oppression, shady isp and controlling governments but FU if you want to wank it to kids creepers.
Click to expand...
This doesn't really let you get around shaddy ISP's nor Controlling Governments. VPN traffic is relatively easy to identify on a network and as the ISP owns the hardware they can log that you are connecting and assuming they are working with the controlling government they can work backwards from there. Never trust hardware you don't own and all pretense of security is gone if somebody you don't trust has physical access.
 
dgingeri said:
I was just thinking to myself that I didn't have to worry about such things, as I don't do anything that would normally be harmful to others, and thus would not be illegal, but then I realized that there are so many laws and regulations that I'm probably unknowingly offending something that people would find innocuous, but law makers have found reason to make illegal. So many in the government are just out to make things illegal so they can make us all law offenders. Don't assume that just because you aren't evil and don't go around hurting people that you haven't fallen afoul of some law somewhere.
Click to expand...

this.

Earlier this year, 30 armed federal agents entered a Gibson Guitar factory in Nashville, TN when they got a tip that the guitar maker was using illegally harvested wood from India. The CEO of Gibson, Henry Juskiewicz, said the agents seized 6,000 pieces of delicate rosewood used to make fingerboard frets on the guitars. The feds said the rosewood had arrived in the U.S. as unfinished wood, which was a technical violation of the Lacey Act, a law originally enacted in 1900 to prohibit the interstate sale of poached game. While the goods were seized, no one did any time for using the offending wood. Another violator of the Lacy Act was not so lucky.
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federal agents can reach all they want.
 
Good to know. I subscribed to them for use with Kodi (before I realized how futile it is to try and keep up with the "whack a mole" game regarding, ahem, unauthorized streaming). I will be cancelling my subscription. (and just go back to legally obtaining my content)

Edit: Just cancelled my service
 
so it was a lawsuit filed 2 years ago, and the company has been acquired by a new group in 2017. so its plausible they can live up to what they claim. But this bit..

StackPath will defend the privacy of our users, regardless of who demands otherwise.
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um.. if you are given a valid warrant, thats a wee bit hard to say NO to.
 
dgingeri said:
This is the prime hallmark of an oppressive government.
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going after kiddy porn? no.

in the last 5000 years there are millions of oppressive government examples much worse than a dude getting his vpn history turned over for being a perv that should be in jail. my wife's entire culture of people were nearly eradicated by communists. come on man.
 
Ironically thousands of Pentagon and State Department officials have been caught over the years with kiddie porn and it has all been swept under the rug. Hell the NSA has all sorts of kiddie porn blackmail on politicians all over the world. Judging from the Podesta emails that were released by Wikileaks kiddie porn is the least of our government's problems.
 
oROEchimaru said:
going after kiddy porn? no.

in the last 5000 years there are millions of oppressive government examples much worse than a dude getting his vpn history turned over for being a perv that should be in jail. my wife's entire culture of people were nearly eradicated by communists. come on man.
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No, if you actually look at what I quoted, "federal agents can reach all they want." is the hallmark of an oppressive government. They can violate our rights all they want, go whereever and get whatever they want, to prove anyone violated any laws they want to push against those they don't like. They never get any backlash.
 
So someone gets busted for kiddie porn, then turns around and sues the VPN series for misrepresenting they did and then has a huge payday when he gets out of the clink?
 
Love it when lawyers and companies can get together and make phrases mean totally different things:
"no logging policy" except when we want
"unlimited" except when we decide you've used too much
"free" except requires you to purchase something else
 
They all maintain LOGS. Even when they tell you they don't. I was at a function just a few months ago and met a handful of guys that work at Godaddy and Siteground. Devs along with IT. One guy actually worked for Newshosting.

They all maintain logs of any and all activities.

You guys are idiots if you really think because some guy told you he wasn't checking out your hot girlfriend or wife that he was actually telling the truth. This is a common sense thing.

Zero effort for them to do this and store it.

You might have better luck on overseas VPN's and USENET that do not have DMCA. Your ping / latency over seas for a VPN is not going to be a very good experience but that's your best shot.
 
Hope this causes IPVanish to lose a *lot* of customers. What a bunch of liars.
 
Jim Kim said:
And you're a fool if you think you can get around oppression, shady isp and controlling governments.
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? Ive done over seas work and my VPN let me do exactly that. It let me bypass local government internet filters and blocks so I could do crazy things like use VOIP to call my family as well as search more personal "resources" while alone ;) , soooo yes I do think I can lol.
 
Considering this is Homeland Security we are talking about, they could issue a secret national security letter to the company requiring them to log, and if such a letter exists, they are not legally allowed to talk about it, even if they want to.

Sadly, privacy on the internet is mostly an illusion.
 
Why is Homeland Security investigating something unrelated to security?

This is why "parallel construction" is a loophole the Government uses to get around the Constitution. As pointed out by Zarathustra, they may have been served a secret national security letter forcing them to log for a legitimate security issue... but evidence swept up in that could then be used for anything not related to national security.

This is like, I don't know... the FBI using CIA resources. The CIA using allied intelligence agencies to plant evidence that could then be used for the FBI to get a secret warrant to spy on political opponents...

This is what Libertarians complain about. The government overreaches it's authority... but no one complains or even thinks about it because it was to get a pedo.

This is how the Government slowly oversteps it's bounds: by doing so in cases where disagreeing with them make YOU look like the bad guy.
 
Ragenrok said:
? Ive done over seas work and my VPN let me do exactly that. It let me bypass local government internet filters and blocks so I could do crazy things like use VOIP to call my family as well as search more personal "resources" while alone ;) , soooo yes I do think I can lol.
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You can because they dont want to spend the money to stop you or they are explicitly letting you think that so you go about your merry way doing something all while they watch... You cannot evade a nation state they have more resources than you ever will.
 
kju1 said:
You can because they dont want to spend the money to stop you or they are explicitly letting you think that so you go about your merry way doing something all while they watch... You cannot evade a nation state they have more resources than you ever will.
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This is why it's important to catch and hold governments accountable when they overstep.

They can have all this power, but how much of it would hold up in court? Unfortunately, a government can ruin your life with rules and laws that are unconstitutional... but they simply haven't been tested much in appeals courts. Again, this is why governments expand their powers in cases where critics of their techniques would look like bad guys... or in cases where defendants don't have much resources to fight it.

You think a cop would steel $50,000 of cash from the trunk of an NFL owner instead of a lady moving the cash to start a business overseas?

http://ij.org/press-release/u-s-gov...riggers-lawsuit-challenging-civil-forfeiture/
 
kju1 said:
You can because they dont want to spend the money to stop you or they are explicitly letting you think that so you go about your merry way doing something all while they watch... You cannot evade a nation state they have more resources than you ever will.
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There is one important qualifier here. If they are looking for you.

You can easily disappear in the noise if you know what you are doing, but once a nation-state with jurisdiction wants to find/block/watch/log/whatever you, you are going to be found/blocked/watched/logged/whatevered.
 
2bogr9.jpg
 
umeng2002 said:
Why is Homeland Security investigating something unrelated to security?

This is why "parallel construction" is a loophole the Government uses to get around the Constitution. As pointed out by Zarathustra, they may have been served a secret national security letter forcing them to log for a legitimate security issue... but evidence swept up in that could then be used for anything not related to national security.

This is like, I don't know... the FBI using CIA resources. The CIA using allied intelligence agencies to plant evidence that could then be used for the FBI to get a secret warrant to spy on political opponents...

This is what Libertarians complain about. The government overreaches it's authority... but no one complains or even thinks about it because it was to get a pedo.

This is how the Government slowly oversteps it's bounds: by doing so in cases where disagreeing with them make YOU look like the bad guy.
Click to expand...

As the NSA stated during congressional testimony, that "They (NSA) have jurisdiction as soon as your traffic EXITS a USA node", which happens with the vast majority of internet traffic.
 
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Ragenrok said:
? Ive done over seas work and my VPN let me do exactly that. It let me bypass local government internet filters and blocks so I could do crazy things like use VOIP to call my family as well as search more personal "resources" while alone ;) , soooo yes I do think I can lol.
Click to expand...
You thought you were "getting away with" something when in all actuality they were letting you do those things. I doubt we would be having this conversation if you had been "searching" for the subject matter that started this thread.
 
kju1 said:
You can because they dont want to spend the money to stop you or they are explicitly letting you think that so you go about your merry way doing something all while they watch... You cannot evade a nation state they have more resources than you ever will.
Click to expand...

Jim Kim said:
You thought you were "getting away with" something when in all actuality they were letting you do those things. I doubt we would be having this conversation if you had been "searching" for the subject matter that started this thread.
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You didn't say anything about fooling or hiding from a government that's determined to catch you. You said that you can't bypass an oppressive government/isp which you certainly can. Never said you could do it forever and never be caught :p
 
Basically, any VPN provider that tells you that they don't keep logs, or have a "no logging" policy?

Assume, rightfully, that they're blowing smoke up your ass (aka LYING).
 
Even if the current owners of the IPVanish truly don't normally keep any logs, my guess if they are served with a court order demanding they allow LEO's to setup monitoring & logging equipment, they would have to comply. In the case being discussed, no logs from IPVanish were required for agents to learn the suspect's end point IP address. With that and enough supporting evidence, they could likely get a 'monitor and log' court order. Much along the lines of the old style phone tap. After that, all of the suspect's activities would be logged, but by law enforcement instead of the VPN company's equipment.

As others have noted, once the data packet clears your edge device, it CAN be tracked, scanned, decrypted, and logged. The only question is how hard it will be for the organization trying to spy on you.
 
Taco said:
PIA, tested a few times in court now, passed each time. Latest:

https://www.vpncompare.co.uk/private-internet-access-no-user-logs-policy-tested/

Not bulletproof, but good enough for me to stay with them.
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That is good to know, thanks. I went with PIA when I signed up for VPN services a couple of years ago based on their claims of not keeping logs. I cross shopped a few others including NordVPN (probably safer given the jurisdiction, but not quite as fast) and PureVPN (very fast, but WAY too close to China Telecom for my comfort level).

They have been very fast. I live in Boston and primarily use their NYC server (but I bounce around on occasion). I find my typical ping only goes up by a ~5ms or less when using the VPN, and over my gigabit connection at home, I can usually sustain over 500MBps when connected, using my router with OpenVPN configured for 256bit AES.



NO VPN:

90610_upload_2017-9-24_15-59-7.png



PIA VPN:

90611_upload_2017-9-24_15-59-31.png



So, no performance complaints at all. This is way better than I expected.

My only gripe with PureVPN is that their mobile client is a bit flaky, often crashing and leaving me exposed when I think I am connected. I have considered setting up my own OpenVPN server at home, and instead using a standard OpenVPN client on my phone to link it to my home network, which then goes out via PIA from there, in order to work around it.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
That is good to know, thanks. I went with PIA when I signed up for VPN services a couple of years ago based on their claims of not keeping logs. I cross shopped a few others including NordVPN (probably safer given the jurisdiction, but not quite as fast) and PureVPN (very fast, but WAY too close to China Telecom for my comfort level).

They have been very fast. I live in Boston and primarily use their NYC server (but I bounce around on occasion). I find my typical ping only goes up by a ~5ms or less when using the VPN, and over my gigabit connection at home, I can usually sustain over 500MBps when connected, using my router with OpenVPN configured for 256bit AES.



NO VPN:

View attachment 79073


PIA VPN:

View attachment 79074


So, no performance complaints at all. This is way better than I expected.

My only gripe with PureVPN is that their mobile client is a bit flaky, often crashing and leaving me exposed when I think I am connected. I have considered setting up my own OpenVPN server at home, and instead using a standard OpenVPN client on my phone to link it to my home network, which then goes out via PIA from there, in order to work around it.
Click to expand...

Are you not able to setup the VPN inside your router?
 
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