Does AirVPN have audits? Do they keep logs?

VPN
1

I was shopping for a VPN and stopped in over on Lemmy to ask some questions about a list I’d encountered that appeared to quantify the merits of a lot of VPNs. One of the responses got me particularly curious, when the user suggested taking the advice of this subreddit over everything else, only to be countered by a comment suggesting that advice was flawed due to the heavily-recommended AirVPN failing to provide regular audits, and also potentially logging. Here’s that comment: https://lemmy.ml/comment/5991027

And here’s the text of it:

Link to r/VPNTorrents’ recommendations.

TL;DR: Only AirVPN and ProtonVPN are recommended. While, IVPN and Mullvad used to be until they discontinued port-forwarding; which makes them unviable for torrenting.

Link that provides Privacy Guides’ opinion on AirVPN. It’s basically rejected because there have been no audits.

I’m curious to hear this sub’s thoughts on the matter, because I’m shopping for a VPN currently.

2

Ultimately what you want from a VPN in the context of torrenting is a trustworthy legal barrier between you and copyright holders. Trust is hard to measure so we can only take it indirectly:

  • Duration of running operation without major issues (project age)
  • “Court-proven”, ie. seized servers that had no identifiable information
  • Infrastructure audit
  • Open-source apps
  • Transparency reports, warrant canary, activism, etc
  • Independent ownership

So as you can see, the audit is one way to measure trust of no logging claims. However, as all other measures - it’s fallible. For example would anyone trust PureVPN and their always-on audit by KPMG when they were known to enable logging on FBI request?

That’s why in the end you need to look at the sum of parts. Sure, AirVPN doesn’t have audit, but they are one of the oldest VPNs out there, they have open-source apps, years of activism and haven’t been acquired by a major group.

3

All good points, and well received. I will admit however that it’s the combination of (1) no audits (2) no canary (3) seemingly very visible logging that has me a bit concerned about them. I’m curious to know if you believe those concerns to be unfounded or overstated.

5

not so viable for macOS users

And Linux users.

6

What visible logging?

The issue brought up here with the tracking is what I’m referring to.

Anyway I appreciate all the info. I honestly am not torrenting (Real Debrid backed apps like weyd for on-demand, and IPTV pushed through Tivimate for live) so I suspect I may be good just going with mullvad.