Cyberstalking Suspect Arrested After VPN Providers Shared Logs With the FBI (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader writes: "VPN providers often advertise their products as a method of surfing the web anonymously, claiming they never store logs of user activity," writes Bleeping Computer, "but a recent criminal case shows that at least some do store user activity logs." According to the FBI, VPN providers played a key role in identifying an aggressive cyberstalker by providing detailed logs to authorities, even if they claimed in their privacy policies that they don't. The suspect is a 24-year-old man that hacked his roommate, published her private journal, made sexually explicit collages, sent threats to schools in the victim's name, and registered accounts on adult portals, sending men to the victim's house...
FBI agents also obtained Google records on their suspect, according to a 29-page affidavit which, ironically, includes the text of one of his tweets warning people that VPN providers do in fact keep activity logs. "If they can limit your connections or track bandwidth usage, they keep logs."

Comments

Re:Good reminder

[Ol Olsoc]

That's not the reasoning. Some are surely trustworthy. The underlying problem is that you literally have no way to tell which ones those are.

The internet is not anonymous. Never has been, never will be unless the fundamental nature off it is changed, which will destroy the internet. The only thing that gives a person any sense of anonymity is the degree of the crime, and how badly they want to find you.