26 of the 115 most popular VPNs are keeping tabs on you (but saying they’re not).
These do NOT keep tabs on you:
Top 20 Strict “No Logging” VPNs
Strict “No Logging” VPNs
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ExpressVPN Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “ExpressVPN is committed to your privacy and does not collect or log browsing history, traffic destination, data content, or DNS queries from Subscribers connected to our VPN.”
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NordVPN Strict No Logging Statement from their website: “From the moment NordVPN.com user turns on NordVPN.com software, their internet data becomes encrypted. It becomes invisible to governments, ISPs, third party snoopers and even NordVPN.com. Further, we have a strict no-logs policy when it comes to seeing user activity online.”
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Mullvad Strict no logging Statement from their website: “No, we do not store activity logs of any kind.”
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WindScribe Strict no logs, Statement from their website: “Since we store the bare minimum for a customer to actually use our service, any request for user data would yield nothing of value. We do not store any logs on who used what IP address, so we cannot tie user activity to any single user.”
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ProtonVPN Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “ProtonVPN is a no logs VPN service. We do not track or record your internet activity, and therefore, we are unable to disclose this information to third parties.”
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Private Internet Access Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “Private Internet Access absolutely does not keep any logs, of any kind, period.”
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TorGuard Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “TorGuard.net does not store or log any traffic or usage from its Virtual Private Network (VPN) or Proxy.”
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IVPN Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “We do not store any connection logs whatsoever. In addition we do not log bandwidth usage, session data or requests to our DNS servers.”
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HIDE.me Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “We do not monitor or log your browsing behavior. It is impossible to record your browsing behavior with our technical backend. All the usage data is anonymous and not connected to your real, public IP address.”
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TunnelBear Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “TunnelBear does NOT store users originating IP addresses when connected to our service and thus cannot identify users when provided IP addresses of our servers. Additionally, we cannot disclose information about the applications, services or websites our users consume while connected to our Services; as TunnelBear does NOT store this information.”
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CyberGhost Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “CyberGhost keeps no logs which enable interference with your IP address, the moment or content of your data traffic.”
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Trust.Zone Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “All our VPN servers around the world ARE NOT storing any log files to keep your privacy safe. All the usage data is anonymous and not connected to your real, public IP address.”
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Avira Phantom VPN Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “AVIRA claims to keep no logs of user data.”
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Avast SecureLine Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “Doesn’t log websites visited or app usage.”
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SaferVPN Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “At SaferVPN we guarantee that we will never log your browsing activity, data, or IP addresses.”
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Ivacy Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “We strictly do NOT log or monitor any online activities of any of our customers that would allow us to associate any specific activity to any specific use.”
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StrongVPN Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “StrongVPN does not collect or log any traffic or use of its Virtual Private Network service.”
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VPNArea Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “We do not monitor, record or store logs for any single customer’s VPN activity. We do not monitor, record or store any login dates, timestamps, incoming and outgoing IP addresses, bandwidth statistics or any other identifiable data of any VPN users using our VPN servers.”
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ZenMate Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “Our objective is that no personal data is collected, processed or permanently stored.”
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proXPN Strict no logging, Statement from their website: “proXPN’s VPN software lets you surf the web the way it was intended: anonymously and without logging and tracking your activity.”
NordVPN made the list. Yaaay!
This site has run this review annually for some time, here is 2018’s list.
If it says so in their policy, that’s not “under the hood”. Their ‘evidence’ is screenshots that are available to potential customers. Clickbait article.
I can’t tell if it is good or bad that the VPN I use is not on any review list I read. (BTGuard)
I’ve been using NordVPN for about a year now and had very good luck with it. The performance is great and I’ve never seen a single article even alleging that Nord keeps any activity logs, despite doing a LOT of research. The speed wasn’t the greatest initially, but they’ve done a lot of upgrades over the last year or so and it’s gotten way better. PIA (Private Internet Access) worked really well too, but I had performance issues with them so I switched to Nord and haven’t looked back.
The recent Facebook debacle should make it fairly obvious, folks. If a VPN company only charges you <$40 for “lifetime” VPN access, they’re tracking you and selling your data. Period. Bandwidth isn’t cheap. People using VPNs are likely downloading a great many things that will consume lots of bandwidth. They can’t be making a profit by only charging a person $40 one time and offering them unlimited access forever without any other means of making money off of that customer. If it sounds to good to be true… 
Encrypt.me is not on the list. Phew.
Glad to see NordVPN isn’t tracking. I got a 3 year deal a while back that came out to less than a dollar a month
I’d be willing to bet that plenty of VPN services are run by law enforcement or spy agencies, since it’d be a fantastic way of collecting incriminating data on people who have something they want to keep private.
What is the point of having a VPN if they log everything you do anyways?
Also some of the lists others have posted just keep track of when you access their site, so would that have any effect of accessing any sites through their VPN?
I’m not very knowledgeable in vpns and looking into jumping on board with one. PIA looks good and ExpressVPN.
I’m was expecting to see ExpressVPN on that list. It tracks bandwidth usage and was asking me to send them picture/scanned copy of my creditcard with pin blocked out to verify it’s me on one of my laptop. I was using it to download torrents. And ofc it blocked its service on that laptop.
VPN Unlimited is on both the top 10 list and the list of those keeping tabs.
I use IP vanish. I like it a lot.
There’s some glaring problems with their investigation. Their result for AnonVPN Full Logging: “It cannot be guaranteed that other means of communications (e.g. mail, facsimile, and voice telephone service) will ever be 100% secure." (Mail, fax and Telephone is there example?)
AnonVPN’s privacy policy: “AnonVPN, LLC. only collects your email and password. We do not keep logs of connection times, activity, or origin IPs. What we don’t collect cannot be requested.”
When I was in Europe a few years ago, I set up a VPN via AWS for myself. There was a high level of obscurity in my usage there that would probably mask me.
You really can’t trust any company with your data, some legal cover text should not be taken as gospel.
Here is what you can trust - VPNs by design are quite enough to cover you. If you are using https the only thing VPN can see is when and to what domain you connected. They can’t see the data you are sending or receiving, or even how many times you get that data really.
Sure logs are not cool but when it comes to general average joe trying not be on the safer side and not being taken advantage of there’s very little VPN provider can do.
I skimmed, whatever. Where does it say HOW they know these things are being logged?
Here are the 26:
PureVPN
HideMyAss
HotSpot Shield
VPN Unlimited
VyprVPN
Astrill
ZoogVPN
Buffered
TigerVPN
Boleh VPN
Anonymizer
IPinator
AnonVPN
FlyVPN
SunVPN
iPredator
HideIP VPN
VPN Gate
HolaVPN
Betternet
Ace VPN
Flow VPN
Freedom-IP
IronSocket
I was using one of these but now that I know they are tracking me I will completely stop.
I heard another way to not get caught is to simply not commit crime.