StrongVPN's logging policies - they now log for life?

Hello,

I have been a StrongVPN customer for around 1 year now, IIRC back when I signed up their policy was that they logged for 14 days. I recently revisited their policy and it now does not state how long they they keep your logs for. I asked their live support how long they now log for, and the guy rudely told me 'all of the information is on our policy page' and kept dodging the question.

So am I right to assume they are now storing your data for life?

 

I believe the word I saw was "indefinitely"... basically meaning as long as they want. It could be 1 day, or 1 century.

This is one of the things that eliminated them from contention for me. In the beginning they were the front-runner, only because I knew they've been around for a long time and were popular.

The same things can be said of McDonalds, though.

 

I was wondering how hard it would be to set up a VPS and VPN through it. Has anyone tried it considering that logging of usage is a severe putoff?

 

It depends on what you want to use your VPN for. If you're purely looking for privacy (eg. when using public WiFi) then it's not a bad option since you can probably use the VPS for other stuff (eg. webmail, file hosting).

It's not much use for anonymity, though, because you'd be the only person using that particular IP (thus easily identified by the VPS provider if required). It seems a logical conclusion that if you're worried about logs being kept then you're probably concerned with anonymity somewhat also

 

I've had a bad experience with StrongVPN customer support too, when I was researching VPNs I throwed in a couple of basic questions and they replied to me with a copy and paste saying that everything is on the policy page or whatever, that crossed them out my VPN candidates list. If I ever have a VPN problem I want personalised support and not someone working for me bouncing me off to Google, that is where small VPN companies beat big whales like StrongVPN, they can give you one to one support and probably know most of their customers and don't outsource support.

 

When in doubt, assume that the VPN provider keeps logs for life. I know it's paranoid, but better safe than sorry.

 

That's true that it wouldn't make sense for anonymity.

 

Can one be anonymous when logging in facebook, emails, forums etc while connecting through vpn?

i mean your identity has already been busted..... correct?

 

Email and forums can be used anonymously as long as you sign up using a VPN and never access the account without one. However, you would have to be vigilant never to divulge identifying information using the account or engage in communications with people who know who you are.

Using Facebook anonymously seems counterproductive unless you are communicating with other people also being anonymous. Otherwise, you could be fairly easily identified purely based on your circle of friends.