CyberGhost emphasized in the report that its strict no-logs policy means user data is none of the VPN’s business. Since they don’t keep logs of any user activity, there’s nothing to hand over, CyberGhost said. CyberGhost VPN is a Romanian-based company estimated to have around 38 million users around the world.
The ‘Vast Majority of Requests Ask for User Data’
CyberGhost’s 2022 final quarter report said the number of requests it received in the last quarter of 2022 marked a 47 percent increase over the previous quarter, and a 128 percent increase compared to Q4 in 2021. Most of the requests ask for sensitive user data, CyberGhost noted. “A vast majority of these requests ask for user data, including users’ original IP addresses, and browsing histories. We never store or collect user data, so we never have any data to share. We have a strict No Logs policy in place, which means we never see what you do online,” the VPN provider said. “It’s none of our business.”
Police Requests and Malicious Activity Flags
CyberGhost’s report went on to say that the large batch of requests included malicious activity flags. This is when a CyberGhost IP address is used in a cyber attack, the report says. These cyber-attacks include a variety of DDoS attacks and botnet attacks, phishing emails, as well as suspicious login attempts, the report said. Active cybercriminals, however, tend to favor dark web VPNs like Safe-Inet, an expensive piece of underworld software that reportedly offered up to five layers of anonymous VPN connections. Safe-Inet was shut down in 2021, as was another dark web favorite, DoubleVPN. Secondly, the report talked about police requests, vis-à-vis criminal investigations leading to a CyberGhost IP address. “If a criminal investigation leads to one of our IP addresses, authorities notify our data center,” the company said, adding that the data center then, in turn, notifies CyberGhost. “In cases like these, authorities ask for details that could aid their investigation like IP addresses, or browsing history.” However, the report said that police requests make up the smallest amount of overall requests, at 0.1 percent over the past three months. Then again, CyberGhost added, “the number of police requests almost doubled” from 9 to 17 from the year prior. “Due to our strict No Logs policy, we don’t have any data to share,” CyberGhost said.
Use a No-Logs VPN Service
Picking a premium virtual private network provider with a proven no-logs approach is vital for privacy and security protection. For this reason, we can confidently recommend CyberGhost VPN for privacy-conscious users. CyberGhost VPN is also located in Romania, away from the 5, 9 and 14 Eyes alliances. “In 2022, we counted more than 4,100 publicly disclosed data breaches. This equates to roughly 22 billion records exposed. Your data is valuable and in high-demand,” CyberGhost added. If you wish to try another alternative that does not log user data, users can go for NordVPN. NordVPN also has a proven track record of not recording user logs, which are stored on temporary RAM disks. Find out the differences between the two premium VPN titans in our NordVPN vs CyberGhost comparison piece.