PureVPN FBI Case: Truth Behind the Curtain

You may have heard a lot of negative things being said about PureVPN on the web. Many blame the VPN service for lying to VPN users, and keeping logs of their data. Many consider PureVPN as a service that fails to provide online anonymity to users. These and more complaints spread like wildfire all over the web almost two years ago.

At the time, there were allegations that PureVPN has shared browsing logs with the FBI in order to assist the organization in one of its investigation. People started crying foul, even before the details of the case were revealed to the public. The entire World Wide Web kept buzzing with questions. Is PureVPN really anonymous? Does it keep logs? It’s easy to say that the other competing VPN services took full advantage of the situation and did their best to add more sparks to the ongoing drama.

No body stopped to notice that the claims they are reading may be wrong. No body waited to hear the official stance from the FBI or the VPN brand in question. But the actual truth did come out, and it made us rethink our entire stance against the VPN service.

Mentioned below are the actual facts connected to the case. It also mentions how PureVPN helped the FBI without violating any of its promises.

FBI Case: The facts

On October 6 2017, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts announced that a 24 year old Ryan S. Lin of Newton was arrested by the FBI. He was allegedly involved in cyberstalking charges.

This is what Ryan S. Lin of Newton had been doing because of which the FBI went after him and caught him in the end. Beginning in April 2016, Lin started stalking and harassing Jennifer Smith, a 24-year old woman who used to share rooms with him.

Lin is a computer savvy who majored in computer science. He used his skills to hack Jennifer’s online accounts and collect any information he could get his hands on. He obtained some very personal photos, as well as sensitive information about her medical and sexual histories. These, coupled with some more private details, were shared with different people without her consent. Some of these people were Jennifer’s direct acquaintances, including her roommates, co-workers, and her 13-year-old-sister. He also sent a couple of images to Jennifer’s family that features child abuse.

This apparently did not satisfy Lin, so she used her accounts to register her into sites that were dedicated to prostitution. A flurry of people started coming to Jennifer’s home for intimate purposes because of this reason. And if all this wasn’t enough, Lin went a step further and used Jennifer’s accounts to threaten people with bomb attacks and more, which even led to people calling in the police on her.

Soon the FBI got involved and started searching for the person who was involved in cybercrime. What was immediately revealed in this case was that Lin was very cautious in covering up his footsteps. He used multiple anonymous services to keep his steps covered, and used VPNs and secure emailing services to cover up his steps.

But he did make one misstep when he accessed these accounts from his work computer. Although he did delete everything and reinstalled the OS, the FBI managed to find his tracings inside it. This is when they found out that Lin had been using PureVPN while cyberstalking Jennifer. The PureVPN FBI logs were then used to prove that Lin was involved in this extreme cyberstalking campaign.

In our intense PureVPN review, we compared the VPN provider’s old privacy policy with the updated one. Upon in-depth analysis of the policy, we have concluded that the company doesn’t keep any logs. Contrary to the popular misconception that has been unethically advertised by some VPN review websites, PureVPN doesn’t even keep time stamps anymore, let alone browsing logs of the user as per their updated privacy policy.

The policy was immediately updated after the FBI scandal. Before that, it mentioned keeping timestamps (that were shared with the FBI) for maintenance purposes. To clarify what timestamps are, it only refers to the VPN IP a user connected to when using PureVPN. It doesn’t store any kind of browsing logs. Which is why the FBI had to work a whole lot more to actually trace the browsing activities of Lin. 

More work was done on this information and soon got their hands on all the data that incriminate Lin in this case. Lin now faces up to five years in prison and three years of supervised release.

The question?

Now that you know the actual facts behind the curtain, do you still believe that PureVPN was guilty and deserves all the negative coverage it is still getting? It is wrong to blame the company for lying to its customers, when it never did. Instead of getting applauded for its actions, the VPN service continues to face the wrath of angry reviews. It tells you a lot about where this world is heading to.