ExpressVPN has announced to remove all its physical servers from India on Thursday, June 2, 2022.
The decision was made as a response to new cyber policies announced in April by Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERP – In). The CERP has announced rules and policies that will be effective by June 27, and many VPNs have expressed their concern over that.
According to the new policies, the VPNs, will have to store user’s data for at least 5 years and will have to share it with government when required. The VPNs will also have to store users logs for 180 days.
While CERT announced these policies are built for greater cybersecurity and to reduce cybercrimes, according to ExpressVPN, these policies are incompatible with the purpose of VPN. The purpose of a VPN service is to keep user activities private and to provide security against data leak and by storing and sharing data, the purpose of VPN will be failed.
Express VPN announced its new way to avail VPN services to Indian user by providing the virtual VPNs instead of Physical VPNs in the country. The users can use the IP address and Location of India through their device by choosing India (via Singapore) or India (via UK). The company is already providing its virtual VPN through UK for years.
ExpressVPN explained – “”We believe the damage done by potential misuse of this kind of law far outweighs any benefit that lawmakers claim would come from it”.
The VPN service provider assured customers that it does not save any information of users including logs of IP addresses, outgoing VPN IP addresses, connection timestamps, or session durations.
Other leading service providers like NordVPN, Surfshark, and ProtonVPN has also raised their concern regarding this new policy. NordVPN may also remove its physical servers from India soon.
