Mullvad’s ISPs own logs?
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Hello. I know mullvad does not store any kinds of logs of my web activity on their servers, but wouldn’t their servers ISPs still see which IP connects to where?
Say I connect to a VPN server hosted in sweden. The servers ISP is ABC. Wouldn’t ABC see everything and likely log everything as well? At least in finland ISPs are required by the law to store usage data for a set time period.
Does it work like this or did I get something wrong?
Thanks and sorry if its a dumb question.
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I don't think he meant the content of the traffic itself but more the origin IP, the destination IP etc
Yup you're correct and this is something that is very frequently ignored.
VPNs don't provide anonymity. The ISP of whatever server you connect to can see who connects to it and what the pool of users who are connected are doing (as much as is allowed to anyways, for example it could see a given user is going to a given IP but not see the contents due to HTTPS. And apart from fancy tricks like correlation analysis there is no large scale practical way which IP going in is doing on the way out.) You can decrease the odds of a single party knowing both of this by using multi hop (you connect to one server which then connects you to another server), but it doesn't completely eliminate it.
A similar (albeit harder to exploit) problem also occurs on the Tor network.
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Mullvad answer this question in the multi hop section:
"A key question is whether you can trust the data center where the VPN server is located. VPN services such as Mullvad rent or lease servers from data centers all over the world for their network. VPN servers are encrypted, secure, and under the control of Mullvad, thereby preventing third-party access to sensitive user-data and traffic.
But, the data-center could be forced, or unknowingly equipped with monitors of incoming and outgoing traffic, on the VPN server. " https://mullvad.net/en/help/multihop-wireguard/
With multi hop your VPN usage pass by 2 servers, so reducing the possibility of being logged(the second mullvad server will only know the first mullvad server and can't know your IP). It could be recommended for sensitive activites(or better use TOR). But for regular usage such as torrenting, it's not necessary.
Trying to avoid this isn't really possible anymore no matter if the direct upstream ISP logs or not:
https://www.404media.co/us-counterintel-buys-netflow-data-team-cymru-track-vpns/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg84yy/data-brokers-netflow-data-team-cymru
Allegedly this private company can sell you access to the netflow for 90% of the internet traffic: https://gizmodo.com/ncis-whistleblower-military-data-broker-cymru-wyden-1849564984