Last year, a report was submitted to the government for the authorities to detect and permanently ban VPN services in India. The suggested step, however, was not implemented, which came as a sigh of relief for VPN companies. Instead, the Indian government has now announced a new policy that mandates VPN providers in the country to collect, log, and store user data, including names, phone numbers, and even IP addresses. Let’s take a look at the details below.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) of India and the CERT-In recently announced the new policy for VPN providers in India via an official memo. The policy aims to give more power to CERT-In, which is responsible for monitoring cybercrimes in the country.
With these steps, the government aims to prevent cybercriminals from using VPN services for malicious activities. However, it would also mean that all VPN users’ online activities will now be logged and stored in a database for the government to access anytime. While it may end up curbing cyber attacks, this new policy also puts a user’s personal information out in the open. Hence, it would now be difficult for VPN companies to promote their services with privacy as a key feature.
