What Is a No-Log VPN?

Imagine someone follows you like a shadow and writes down every single move you make, like an astute detective. This isn’t possible in real life, but in the virtual one, the computer world, keeping track of your moves down to clicks, is a basic feature. So far, it’s not so scary because these records are stored on your personal computer.

The scary part is keeping track of your activities when it’s no longer limited to your device, that is, when you’re online. So, how can you keep the snoopers away from your online business? With a no-log VPN. A no-log VPN is a VPN that:

1. does not store users’ IP addresses.
2. does not record the connection timestamps or session durations.
3. does not track visited websites.
4. and ultimately, undergoes regular no-log audits.

7 Red Flags of a Fake No-Log VPN

Understanding whether a VPN service provider keeps zero user logs has two aspects. From a technical point of view, it involves the coding and mechanisms required to dismiss logs, which is beyond the scope of this post. But from a general perspective, the following items are danger signs for privacy leaks. If you see 4 signs in a VPN provider, you steer clear of them.

1. Statistics in ads: When they include details like popular servers or speed metrics, they keep at least some connection logs and use them for marketing purposes.
2. Use of Hard Drives: In the best-case scenario, no-log VPN providers use diskless servers that only rely on RAM. If a VPN provider doesn’t advertise No-RAM servers, they might keep your logs longer than what’s needed for technical reasons.
3. Vague policy language: You should review the VPN service provider’s Terms of Service on their website. If the terms are NOT written in clear language, or small details contradict the big claims, you can’t trust their no-log policy.
4. Aggressive affiliate marketing: This marketing method is essentially asking an agency to promote the VPN services of a given VPN company. What happens here is that to gain more profit, affiliates might make false promises. So, if things sounded too good to be true, you should do more research on their claims.
5. No independent no-logs audits: A truly no-log VPN service provider has third-party auditors regularly examine company records to ensure users that nothing is stored on the company’s servers.
6. Requires email and phone verification: Requiring the email address is common in VPNs due to account management and subscriptions. You can use an email with a random address for that purpose. However, if the VPN required more information, like a phone number or address, you should switch to another VPN.
7. Outdated warrant canary: A warrant canary is an indirect method of informing users that the company has not received a subpoena (i.e., court order) that might enforce disclosing company data, which might include your logs. A warrant canary is a statement like this: “As of a given date, we have not received any secret warrants or subpoenas.” If the given date is old, this means your logs could be compromised.

On a related note:

Online Privacy Guide for Managing Your Digital Footprint: 5 Tools + 20 Tips

Top 5 No-Log VPNs

Most VPN service providers make the no-log claim, but the following ones are the most reliable ones, both based on audits and VPN reviews.

1. ExpressVPN is the most audited VPN service provider in the world. It has undergone 23 independent third-party audits as of November 2025. Once in 2017, Turkish authorities seized a server and found no logs.
2. ProtonVPN recently passed its fourth consecutive annual no-log audit in September 2025. Since 2021, all ProtonVPN servers are RAM-Only, meaning that there are no traditional hard disks installed on their servers. This means that recording user logs is physically impossible.
3. IVPN shines in transparency; it frequently updates information about server count and load. Its servers have been RAM-Only since 2022, and it has undergone several annual audits.
4. Windscribe has undergone several audits in 2025 and has proved that no logs exist. It completed its full-RAM transition in 2024. Plus, it uses the same no-log infrastructure for free-tier users.
5. HidzoVPN is another VPN provider with a strong focus on the security of user data and privacy protection. Based on HidzoVPN’s no-log policy, “even if required by law, we typically cannot identify what users accessed or when.”

What “Logs” Do Other VPNs Keep?

Let’s clarify something first. The no-log policy that VPN service providers claim to follow does not mean absolute zero. For technical reasons (troubleshooting, load balancing, bug fix, etc.), retaining connection logs TEMPORARILY is the default industry practice. The retained data includes:

• Original IP address (even if only for the duration of the session or a few hours/days)
• Connection timestamps (when you connected and disconnected)
• The server you connected to
• Amount of bandwidth used
• Temporary session IDs

Usage or Activity Logs

In direct contrast to connection logs, activity logs are none of your VPN provider’s business. These logs include information about the websites you visit and any unencrypted data. Activity logs are the death of online privacy since they disclose information about religious or political views, sexual orientation, health conditions, and other highly sensitive personal data.

Activity logs, when combined with connection logs, can create a perfect image of who you are, what your habits are, what you like, etc. In other words, these logs can be weaponized as a means of identity theft.

Hopefully, reputable VPNs do not record activity logs, but other free VPNs you might come across on app stores are likely to do so. After all, nothing good is free.

Anonymized or Aggregated Logs

These logs contain compiled information from users, and they’re harmless in terms of privacy because identifiable details, such as IP addresses and timestamps, have been removed from them. Bandwidth consumption of a given server, the number of simultaneous connections, average connection speeds, and statistics about peak hours are examples of these logs.

These logs are typically used for network diagnosis and anomaly detection. Also, VPN providers can use these details for marketing purposes. However, these logs can still jeopardize users’ privacy when combined with connection logs.

Payment and Account Logs

These logs include information about your registration, subscription start and end date, payment methods, transaction IDs, wallet addresses, etc. These logs are necessary for account management, financial processing, regulatory compliance, and client support.

In the best-case scenario, these logs are encrypted and kept separately on servers in privacy-friendly jurisdictions like Switzerland. If legal bodies demand access to these logs and cross-reference them with external data, for instance, from your ISP, they can ultimately identify the user.

Why No-Log is Essential for True Privacy

Basically, the very existence of logs is a threat to users’ privacy; it doesn’t matter whether they’re encrypted, anonymized, or aggregated. A court order makes the VPN provider hand over the logs to authorities, and leads them to your doorstep.

Whether a VPN strictly follows a no-log policy is literally a matter of life and death for some users. Who? Journalists, whistleblowers, or political activists who want to go rogue about a scandal. Their safety heavily depends on their anonymity, which only a truly no-log VPN can provide.

This is true for ordinary users too; users who care about their online privacy and seek to protect their online routine. The most significant threat that these logs can pose is identity theft and commercial exploitation through targeted ads. Overall, there’s a short distance from connection logs and activity logs to social media profiling.

How to Verify a No-Log Claim

The most reliable no-log verification is independent third-party audits. For example, ProtonVPN is one of the reliable VPN providers that undergoes annual external security and no-log audits. But what if a VPN provider claimed no-log but didn’t provide any proof? In this case, you’d have to spend some time verifying for yourself.

Terms of Service

You can start with the terms of service, which must be available on the VPN provider’s website. You should pay attention to detail and evaluate their transparency regarding how they handle user information.

Supported Payment Methods

Another thing is supported payment methods. VPNs with a strict no-log policy support anonymous payment methods (e.g., Monero cryptocurrency).

VPN News and Reviews

You can also study VPN reviews from multiple sources to evaluate a VPN provider’s no-log claim. PCMAG and CyberNews are two websites with up-to-date VPN reviews that can assist you in choosing a reliable VPN.

Open-source VPN Client

Finally, you can check whether the VPN provider’s client software (i.e., VPN app) is open source. When the app is open source, anyone can see the coding of the app. Of course, reviewing the code requires programming knowledge, but the very fact that the app is open source goes a long way in transparency and authenticity of the no-log claim.

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