After the Ministry of Home Affairs in India proposed to permanently ban VPN services in the country late last year, we saw the government pass a new VPN policy earlier this year that mandates VPN companies to collect and store user data in local servers for at least five years. Now, ahead of the implementation of the policy on June 27, ExpressVPN, one of the leading VPN providers, has announced to remove its physical servers in India. Check out the details right below!
ExpressVPN recently released an official blog post to announce that it “refuses to participate in the Indian government’s attempts to limit internet freedom,” and as a result, the company will be removing its India-based VPN servers. The company says that it is a privacy-focused company and does not want its users to be monitored by the government.
Now, it is also worth mentioning that ExpressVPN is not the only company that has taken steps against India’s new VPN policy. Other service providers such as Nord and Surfshark have also expressed their concerns with the new policy. To recall, India’s new VPN policy requires the VPN providers to collect user data such as their names, email addresses, IP addresses, and phone numbers for at least five years. This somewhat defeats what VPN tries to provide: privacy. You can read more about India’s new VPN policy in our in-depth story to know more about it.
