Understanding GOI’s New VPN Rules and How They Affect Your Privacy

The Government of India (GOI) recently issued a stringent new directive for Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and cloud services to collect and store data of users for five years.

The action has been taken by the country’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), which comes under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, and according to many VPN providers, users are under threat of losing their privacy.

Last week, popular VPN providers NordVPN revealed their potential plans to stop providing services in India following the announcement of the directive, as they believe in protecting the privacy of users by masking their IP address, while also making sure that users don’t have to worry about their personal information being stolen for the wrong reasons.

Just IN: India has ordered VPN companies to collect users data & handover it to Indian government, or face ban in India.

— South Asia Index (@SouthAsiaIndex) May 4, 2022

As per the directive issued by CERT-In, VPN providers will have to store customer information such as their names, physical and IP addresses, E-mail IDs, and phone numbers. Moreover, they have also been tasked to track their usage patterns as well.

This prevents users from accessing the no-logging service popularized by VPN providers, which doesn’t force users to share any personal details to them. Many services pride on having this feature, as it prevents them from gaining any knowledge about the user’s IP address.

However, with the new directive, VPN providers are forced to ask for customer data, which takes away all the efforts taken by these companies to provide privacy to the users.

In its statement, the Ministry of Electronics & IT has mentioned that the new directive will help CERT-In to close off the gaps it has identified while handling cyber incidents and interactions. However, at the same time, users believe that their privacy will be under threat, as they will be constantly monitored in the world’s largest democracy.