The move is a reaction to India’s new legal data retention provisions, which now require companies that process the data of Indian citizens to collect their IP addresses – effectively defeating the point of a VPN. Other VPN companies have either left or confirmed they will be leaving the country before the new directive is put into place, whilst other companies in the privacy tech sector are also thinking twice. After Surfshark left India, the company said it would still be running virtual servers outside of the territory that dish out Indian IP addresses to users, effectively meaning privacy-conscious netizens looking to view geo-restricted content in India could still do so without worries about their data being collected. However, NordVPN – which merged with Surfshark last year – has said it won’t be following suit. This is because NordVPN is pioneering a dedicated server infrastructure, meaning all of the servers in its network are located in the countries they say they are. Private Internet Access – like NordVPN – is known for its ultra-secure network and extensive selection of privacy features, and will be a blow to Linux users in the country considering it has one of the best GUI’s for that operating system. IPVanish has not left India just yet, but released a statement two weeks ago reaffirming the company’s commitment to no logs policy and confirming if the law is indeed enforced on June 27th as planned, the company will leave. CyberGhost has also said it will shut down its servers in India. Not all VPNs work the same, however. Business VPNs are a go-to for companies with employees working in a variety of different locations – they make it possible to securely access company servers, rather than servers in a consumer VPN network infrastructure. The directive being pushed through by the Indian government is damning for the future of the VPN industry in the country. But even worse is the attitude of an increasingly authoritarian government to its billion-strong population.
