ExpressVPN has removed its physical VPN servers from India to reject the country’s new VPN rules. The company also slammed the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team’s (CERT-In) direction on VPN services. ExpressVPN is also one of the first big players who refused to participate in the Indian government’s attempts to limit internet freedom.
India’s new VPN rule will come into effect on June 27, 2022. According to the new law, VPN companies are to store and hand over user data to the Indian government. Most VPN services operate on a no-log policy and only store data temporarily on RAM.
“The new data law initiated by India’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), intended to help fight cybercrime, is incompatible with the purpose of VPNs, which are designed to keep users’ online activity private. “
ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN rejects India’s demand to collect user data
The VPN company will cease operations of their physical VPN servers in India, effective June 2, 2022. However, they will continue to maintain their two Indian virtual server locations. Virtual server locations often help ensure a fast, secure, and reliable connection.
These virtual server locations will also allow users to connect with Indian IP addresses. ExpressVPN also confirmed to Fossbytes that users based in India would be able to continue using their apps as usual. When using ExpressVPN, the service will reroute the user’s network traffic through Singapore and UK servers.
“We are doing this because we refuse to ever put our users’ data at risk. Not only is it our policy that we would not accept logging, but we specifically designed our VPN servers to not be able to log in, including by running in RAM. Our policy and server architecture are simply incompatible with this new regulation, thus we have no choice but to cease operating physical VPN servers in India.”
ExpressVPN
