Can Police Track a VPN? A Complete Guide

Table of Contents:

• Can Police track investigator VPN users and activities?
• What Information About Users Can VPNs Have?
• How Can Police trace investigators’ VPNs?
• Guide On How Can Police Track You If You Use VPN
• Countries Which Allow Police to Track Investigator VPN Users
• Should You Worry About Police Tracking Investigator VPN Usage?
• Final Thoughts
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

The sole purpose of using a VPN is to stay anonymous and private online but are VPNs safe? Can the Police track your phone? Can VPNs be tracked? Do VPNs protect in all circumstances, even when illegal activities are committed? That keeps users wondering if Police can track VPN activity while purchasing something online and what role a country play where the VPN is registered.

All of the questions above are legit for all VPN users worldwide. This article answers all that and more for all the privacy-conscious VPN users wondering if they can get tracked by the Police while using a  investigator VPN.

Can Police track investigator VPN users and activities?

A VPN is an extremely useful security tool that helps users unblock all restricted sites and browse the internet with complete anonymity and privacy. It is also great for privacy-conscious individuals who want to protect their financial and personal information from prying eyes.

But can Police track VPN users’ activities despite VPN promising them to provide anonymity? Not if users use a high-quality and premium VPN to despise themselves. However, some insight police can obtain data on registered addresses, data retention, and sharing policies. VPN providers registered in Europe are liable to store electronic data for at least six months. Similarly, VPN providers must follow data retention laws in their respective regions.

Suppose VPN providers are ordered to hand in information to insight police. In that case, their pockets might still be relatively empty as reliable VPNs tend to store as little information as possible, so most do not store users’ activity logs.

What Information About Users Can VPNs Have?

VPN providers have different policies regarding the data they retain from users, so ensure reading the terms and conditions of the VPN service you’re interested in before making a purchase. Moreover, different regions have different laws regarding data retention depending on their country of origin. For instance, despite different claims, VPN providers in the EU or US will need to log your data by their specific governing bodies.

Your VPN can record three categories of data: usage logs, connection logs, and no logs. Usage logs provide information such as the websites, apps, or gadgets you use. Connection records will contain your actual IP address, VPN IP address, and data use. Finally, some VPN providers will not log anything.

As a result, we can conclude that while most VPNs are secure, they are not all completely private. Before downloading, check what information your VPN stores.

How Can Police trace investigators’ VPNs?

Police cannot track live, encrypted VPN traffic, but if they have a court order, they can request connection or usage logs from users’ ISP (Internet Service Provider). Since ISPs know that any user is using a VPN, they can direct the Police to the VPN service provider used by the particular user.

It won’t go any far if users make the right choice of VPN service provider, i.e., if they use a VPN with a clear no-log policy like Ivacy VPN. In that case, even if the court instructs the VPN to submit data, they would not have anything meaningful.

Guide On How Can Police Track You If You Use VPN

So, can you be tracked with a VPN? Police must go through many loopholes before acquiring any information from VPN providers. Their efforts should include the following steps:

• Police discover a suspicious IP address through forensic research.
• Police would most certainly correlate the IP address with a VPN service after additional investigation.
• The Police will contact the VPN provider to learn more about the IP address and its customers.
• VPNs may comply with court demands and reveal the information they possess. However, depending on the data they log, their supplied data may be of little to no value.

Countries Which Allow Police to Track Investigator VPN Users

Countries like India have strict government conditions for VPN providers where they need to reshape their logging practices to store their users’ data, which is against Ivacy VPN’s policies.