Will authorities go on a hunting expedition?
On April 28th, the Indian government issued new rules demanding all VPN (virtual private networks) service providers to store user data for at least five years — even after customers have deleted their accounts or canceled their subscriptions — under the pretext of tackling cybercrime. The law is to go into effect in later this month and noncompliant businesses could face up to a year in prison. While it remains unclear whether this law applies to international providers doing business in India, ExpressVPN is taking no chances and has made the decision to remove servers on Indian soil from its network.
In a blog post, the Lithuania-based VPN provider conveyed that as a company focused on protecting privacy and freedom of expression online, it refuses to participate in the “Indian government’s attempts to limit internet freedom.”
The company has assured its vast Indian audience that they’ll still be able to use ExpressVPN and that they can connect to VPN servers based in Singapore or the UK that will grant them virtual Indian IP addresses. That enables Indians to continue using a VPN without having their data stored by the company and turned up by the government on request — just the way it was before.
While all this does appear to be a win for privacy advocates — other VPN providers will likely follow in ExpressVPN’s footsteps — the Indian government does have a tendency of getting its own way. Remember the TikTok ban that was so effective in wiping access to the app and dozens of other digital platforms? Section 69A of the IT Act in the Indian Constitution empowers authorities to block that access, so it remains to be seen if the government will spark new firewalls to block out VPN service providers as well.
VPNs are used by many to access services not available in their country or to simply browse the internet safely and anonymously. The latter is especially crucial in countries with strict internet censorship — something that’s worsening in India as recent policies have tanked its internet freedom rankings for multiple consecutive years.
