How can you be caught using Private VPN when there's no logs about who you are?

Question

I know there are 2 services of VPN (free and paid). Normally, free VPNs need money from somewhere and sometimes they can sell your information to any agency that needs it.
Now, if we are talking about a paid VPN where they use encryption and don't keep any logs or information about the user, IP addresses, or what you're doing, how can a hacker be traceable? Then, the best hackers who have been caught must have been a free VPN, because they were too cheap to pay 7-10$/month or I'm missing something.

An excerpt from the FAQs of one of these VPN services. They have it in the privacy policy.

Answer 1

Update/Note: This is not to discourage VPN usage. I personally use one of the providers mentioned below, and I'm very happy with it. The important point is not to have an illusion of being 100% protected by the VPN provider. If you do something bad enough that state actors are after you, the VPN provider aren't going to risk themselves for you. If those coming after you are motivated enough, they'll exert all possible legal (and not so legal) powers they have. Downloading torrents or posting on anarchist forums is probably not motivating enough, but death threats to up-high politicians on the other hand... If there's one thing to take from this post is this: Use common sense.

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I've researched this subject for more than 3 years*: Looking for VPN providers, reading through their Privacy Policy and Legal pages, contacting them, contacting their ISPs when possible, and I've concluded the following:

I was able to find zero reputable/trustworthy and publicly-available (free or paid) VPN service provider that:

• Actually doesn't keep usage logs.

• Actually doesn't respond with your personal information when presented with a subpoena.

I'm not exaggerating, absolutely none, zero, nada, nula, nulla, ciphr, cifra.

* ^{Obviously not a dedicated research for 3 years}

Update: Regarding "super awesome Swedish VPN service providers". Swedish service provider obey the 'Electronic Communications Act 2003 389'. Sections 5, 6, and 7 under "Processing of traffic data" completely protect your privacy, but go a little further and read section 8

The provisions of Sections 5 to 7 do not apply

1. When an authority or a court needs access to such data as referred to in Section 5 to resolve disputes.

2. For electronic messages that are conveyed or have been dispatched or ordered to or from a particular address in an electronic communications network that is subject to a decision on secret wire-tapping or secret tele-surveillance.

3. To the extent data as referred to in Section 5 is necessary to prevent and expose unauthorised use of an electronic communications network or an electronic communications service.

In case the authorities order secret wire-tapping, the service provider shall not disclose information about it

Section 19 An operation shall be conducted so a decision on secret wire-tapping and secret tele-surveillance can be implemented and so that the implementation is not disclosed.

Update 2: Regarding other highly recommended super anonymous VPN services (I'll go over only the top two)

BTGuard: You only need to take one look at the Privacy Policy to know that there's something shady going on.

• Before or at the time of collecting personal information, we will identify the purposes for which information is being collected.

• We will collect and use of personal information solely with the objective of fulfilling those purposes specified by us and for other compatible purposes, unless we obtain the consent of the individual concerned or as required by law.

• We will only retain personal information as long as necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes.

• We will collect personal information by lawful and fair means and, where appropriate, with the knowledge or consent of the individual concerned.

You can clearly see the intentionally vague language: "fulfilling those purposes specified by us", what are those purposes specified by them? Nobody knows. They even clearly say that they'll collect personal information when required by the law. In the last point they even state that they even don't have to inform you about the collection of your personal information unless it's "appropriate".

PrivateInternetAccess: This is probably one of the easiest legal language in the business.

You agree to comply with all applicable laws and regulations in connection with use of this service. You must also agree that you nor any other user that you have provided access to will not engage in any of the following activities:

• Uploading, possessing, receiving, transporting, or distributing any copyrighted, trademark, or patented content which you do not own or lack written consent or a license from the copyright owner.

• Accessing data, systems or networks including attempts to probe scan or test for vulnerabilities of a system or network or to breach security or authentication measures without written consent from the owner of the system or network.

• Accessing the service to violate any laws at the local, state and federal level in the United States of America or the country/territory in which you reside.

If you break any of their conduct conditions (mentioned above)

Failure to comply with the present Terms of Service constitutes a material breach of the Agreement, and may result in one or more of these following actions:

• Issuance of a warning;
• Immediate, temporary, or permanent revocation of access to Privateinternetaccess.com with no refund;
• Legal actions against you for reimbursement of any costs incurred via indemnity resulting from a breach;
• Independent legal action by Privateinternetaccess.com as a result of a breach; or
• Disclosure of such information to law enforcement authorities as deemed reasonably necessary.

Answer 2

Most anonymizing services who claim that they "don't keep logs" actually do keep logs, because otherwise they would be in even deeper trouble when the Feds drop on them at 6:00 AM with terrorism charges. A VPN service like the ones you quote is basically saying: "yeah, we accept to take full legal responsibility for everything you do online for only 7$ per month". Does this really sound... plausible ?

Also, paying involves transactions, and transactions include logs. Everywhere. To a large extent, stolen credit card information mitigates the risks of being caught through these logs, but add extra risks (i.e. there is now credit card fraud, and this enlists some other three-letter agencies in the pursuit of the perpetrator).

Answer 3

More precisely, from the privacy policy for the VPN service:

We will store a time stamp and IP address when you connect and disconnect to our VPN service together with the IP address of the individual VPN server used by you. We do not store details of, or monitor, the websites you connect to when using our VPN service.

In other words, they log that user X (identified by his account information and client IP address) used VPN endpoint V from time T1 to time T2.

Now suppose the authorities want to know who did something, and they know that the culprit was coming from V at time T. They will ask the VPN provider, who can tell them which user was using V at that time.

A VPN only provides one level of insulation between the user's identity and the services that the user accesses. In a situation where law enforcement becomes involved, that's not much. If anonymity can be achieved at all, it requires using multiple hops, preferably in as many different jurisdictions as possible. Read on how Tor works.

Answer 4

When you're wondering about that kind of thing, it really pays to go and read the full privacy policy. It details what they keep in the log.

Specifically, speaking about HMA, they keep a log of what IP address was assigned to you. This means that, given a court order, they will (be required to) provide your real identity to law enforcement agencies. Other (serious) VPN providers do the same thing.

Answer 5

Like I've stated in the comment section, you can never be sure that your VPN provider doesn't log any information that could be leaked to the government or any party that has enough power.

Another way to use a VPN would be to rent a VPS and setup your own VPN service on it. However, you would need to make payments by a prepaid credit card and not provide any personal information. Bitcoins are often referred to as an anonymous way to make payments but have been proven to not be so anonymous after all.

Keep in mind that this solution might still not be perfectly anonymous, unless you never divulge your information when you connect to your VPS (IP, location, etc.), perhaps by using Tor like others mentioned.

Answer 6

None of these answers are actually answering the question, and nobody is mentioning the power behind meta data. Let's go into detail as to how this can be done.

How can you be caught using Private VPN when there's no logs about who you are?

Generally speaking, there are logs about who you are, even if your VPN provider isn't logging anything about your connections. Other companies are logging other information about you. Advertisers, etc.

While a VPN provider may claim not to provide connection logs, their internet service provider may do it. They may be telling you the truth, but not the whole truth.

But to answer your question, let's approach this subject from the assumption that your VPN provider is not logging anything.

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Metadata is far more powerful than most people realize

Meta data is powerful. When metadata can match you to other data sources, finding you is not difficult.

I created a very dumbed-down flowchart to help explain how this can happen. Sure, different operating systems make this harder, but in general, it's much easier to find a Mac or Windows user, or a mobile device user than it is a Linux user.

Before you read, assume Device ID could be anything: your windows key, your hardware device information communicated to providers, your MAC addresses used, IP addresses, browser fingerprints, whatever. It could be any number of things.

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What kind of account information could assist in giving you away?

Any service you use online for which you log into an account for. These include, but are not limited to:

1. Skype
2. Steam
3. Battle.Net
4. Origin
5. Email accounts
6. Xbox Live
7. Discussion forums
8. Windows update
9. Nvidia drivers

If you connect to any of those while connected to a VPN -- and many of these are automatic connections that re-establish themselves once you connect to the VPN -- a clear pattern has arisen.

And that's just a tiny list. There's a countless number of services which will do the same thing. Those service providers will log your access attempt, and they're required by law in most countries to turn over that data if requested.

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Conclusion

In most cases, you can run... but you can't hide. :) Sure, there are ways around this, but the vast majority of VPN users aren't really aware of this. This is one of the many reasons how those "hiding behind 7 proxies" keep getting caught.

Answer 7

Also keep in mind that it only takes a single mistake to get caught. Make a single visit to a target site without enabling your VPN first and they've got your real IP address. If you do any attacking in that session, have any identifying data persist from the non-VPN to VPN session (or vice versa) such as a cookie of any type or browser settings data, or a user name (IIRC one of the Anonymous busts was from a single non-VPN login to IRC) investigators can connect your VPN activity to you even if it really is as opaque as the marketing promises claim.

Answer 8

Even if the service that you are using does everything in it's power to protect your privacy, they can be hacked.

If you have a big VPN company whose users think they can use the VPN to hide their identities, they are a high value target for the NSA and other major intelligence agencies.