If you are interested in StrongVPN and want to know more about the measures it takes to keep you safe and anonymous online, you should start with exploring its privacy policy and learning more about mandatory data retention laws and other means of governmental oppression aimed toward VPNs. In this post, we will cover these matters and help you decide whether StrongVPN is right for you or not.
Legislature
StrongVPN is located in South Lake Tahoe, California. The US is definitely not a VPN-friendly place given the ever-present pressure from government agencies and the legal system. VPN companies can be served a warrant and/or a gag order anytime, in which case they have to hand over sensitive user info. Also, they cannot inform the user about the data transfer, so you wouldn’t even know if the government just got a hold of your data.
Having said that, the US still doesn’t have any mandatory data retention laws, so theoretically, a VPN company that doesn’t keep any user logs wouldn’t have any data to hand over even if ordered to do so. This fact nullifies the perils of the US location but only if the company implements a strict no-logging policy. So, let’s see how StrongVPN fairs in that regard.
Logging Policy
StrongVPN claims a strict no-logging policy. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at the personal user information the company does collect.
You can browse the official website without giving any identifiable data. If you want to subscribe to the service, however, you’ll have to provide your name, email, and billing address. Furthermore, you’ll be prompted to select your username and password. The additional data collected depends on your chosen payment method.
StrongVPN also monitors and stores data regarding the usage of its official website. This includes your IP address and the pages you visited on the site. On the other hand, the company doesn’t monitor your activities outside of its website, which is excellent news since that’s the logging you should really be afraid of.
Bottom line, we don’t like the fact that StrongVPN records user IP addresses, but apart from that, its logging policy looks pretty harmless.