The British VPN company Hide My Ass has recently, by court order, handed over the logs and details of one of its members to the FBI in a hacking case. The court had sent the request for this information after an attack on Sony Entertainment and Cody Kretsinger of Phoenix, Arizona, was arrested. Hide My Ass then released this statement on their blog in response;

“Our VPN service and VPN services in general are not designed to be used to commit illegal activity,” said Hide My Ass. “It is very naive to think that by paying a subscription fee to a VPN service you are free to break the law without any consequences.”

So what does this mean to you the end user? Although I do not condone the use of any VPN for illegal activity, it does beg the question, why am I paying for anonymity is what I am paying for worth it? In my opinion, the service should not be keeping your logs and if it does keep certain logs, these should be destroyed in order to keep their users browsing and internet actions private. It is very likely there will be a surge of angry users of the HMA service who believed their online activity was private and it would also not surprise me if they are on the rough end of the LulzSec stick at a later date. My advise to you, question your provider about their log policy and what information they store and of course, how long they store it for.