New rule for five-years of VPN data

Special Desk

VPN companies will have keep customer data for five years or more a new national directive from the country’s Computer Emergency Response Team, known as CERT-in says.

The body, under the Ministry of Electronics and IT, announced that VPNs in the country will have to keep customer names, validated physical and IP addresses, usage patterns and other forms of personally identifiable information. Those who don’t comply could potentially face up to a year in prison.

So how will that affect users. Many users resort to VPN services in India to maintain a layer of privacy. VPNs or virtual proxy networks allow users to stay free of website trackers that can keep track of data like a user’s location. Paid VPN services and even some good free ones, often offer a no-logging policy. This allows users to have full privacy as the services themselves operate on RAM-only servers, preventing any storage of user-data beyond a standard temporary scale.

With new rule in place companies will be compelled to switch to storage servers, which will allow them to log in user-data and store it for the set term of at least five years. Switching to storage servers will also mean higher costs for the companies.
The directive isn’t limited to VPN providers. Data centers and cloud service providers are both listed under the same provision. The companies will have to keep customer information even after the customer has canceled their subscription or account.
India has a history of applying a heavy hand to online activity. In April, India banned 22 YouTube channels. In 2021, Facebook, Google Twitter ended a tense stand-off with the Indian government when they largely complied with the government’s expanded control over social media content in the country. In 2020, the country banned over 200 Chinese apps, including TikTok, and ultimately banned 9,849 social media URLs.