VPN are the condoms of the internet but are they legal?
Let’s discuss the question — Are VPN’s legal?
Just to answer it really quickly, yes VPNs are legal.
However it really depends on where you are based in the world. Not only that, but what you do with a VPN can be illegal or legal depending of course on what you’re doing.
If you’re wondering about the legality of a VPN, perhaps you’re not really truly understanding what a VPN is. At its core VPN is basically a software in which you connect to a remote server that thereby encrypts your internet traffic and assigns you an anonymous IP address. The core reasons people use VPN is to protect their online privacy and anonymity. A lot of people like using VPNs at coffee shops like Starbucks or at the airport, because these internet connections are unsecured. And any basic hack or anyone that creates some kind of fake or spoofing Wi Fi hotspot can actually take your passwords and see exactly what you’re doing. A lot of people like using VPN also to get around geo restrictions to access more content on their computer. So if you’re in the United States, you can use a VPN with a UK IP address to access BBCiplayer. And likewise, if you’re outside of the United States, you can also use a VPN to access services like the US content library of Netflix, which is the largest in the world. Or if you’re outside the US you can even watch Hulu and Stuff like prime video.
We digress
Now let’s get back to the legality of VPNs
Really quickly. Using a VPN in many countries is completely legal.
But some countries out there like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, restricted or banned the use of VPNs. Mostly because these countries have a strict internet control and they don’t really want you using VPN at all. Unfortunately, a lot of ways people use VPN is in the specific countries. VPNs are very useful, because they can let people bypass restrictions. VPNs actually can help you bypass Terms of Service. As we mentioned with Netflix, however, doing that isn’t necessarily illegal. And there’s a really small chance that your account gets banned, but we’ve never seen it happen yet at all. So it’s cool.
What’s Illegal?
Now a lot of people can use VPNs for criminal activity and this is when law enforcement has gotten involved in the past with stuff like pure VPN and IP vanish, giving information to authorities. For the most people who are using VPN for torrenting and anonymity and stuff like geo restrictions, they really don’t have anything to worry about in terms of legality, especially if you’re not based in China, Russia, Iran or North Korea.
A lot of people think that just because they are using a VPN the FBI or CIA is automatically going to come knocking on your door wondering what you’re doing. But in fact, they’re concerned with people doing large forms of crime and other forms of crime, not people who use VPN just because they care about privacy and anonymity.
And you might be wondering, are certain VPNs legal, are certain VPNs not legal? Well VPNs are legal but there are VPNs out there that are perhaps doing illegal things and like you know, selling your data when they say they’re not or misappropriating your data. A lot of VPNs on the Android store and iOS store, are based in China and are probably sending your data to the Chinese government. We talked about this here. So that’s something to watch out for for sure. VPNs can also be used for illegal activities like file sharing, hacking, buying, selling or downloading stuff on the dark web or cyber stalking. And this is why a lot of people have kind of this gray area with VPNs.
The technology itself isn’t illegal, but you can do illegal things with it.
Now we don’t condone you to do any of these activities of course. VPN are just like any other tool (like the internet). It itself isn’t illegal, but you can do illegal things with it. Anyways, guys, these are just some of our thoughts and analysis of the legality of VPNs. They’re just like any other tool in a lot of ways and of course you can do illegal stuff with it. But the technology itself is perfectly legal, unless you’re in some specific countries, which really don’t want you bypassing restrictions and laws to prevent content being online. But for the most part if you are using a VPN to torrent or bypass GEO restrictions and protect your privacy online, you’re probably going to be okay.
