Does a VPN allow you to be anonymous on the Internet? Although some may think so (especially due to the promises of certain services), this is not the case. This October 20, Le Parisien reported on the case of a 16-year-old high school student living in Yvelines, arrested after having sent false bomb alerts by email to his high school. In order not to be identified, he used a VPN. A precaution that was not enough to avoid his arrest.
Camouflage your IP address
Increasingly popular, VPNs are services that allow you to use an intermediary server to connect to any site. Once the VPN is activated, your Internet box will connect to the third-party server, which in turn will access a website, social network or streaming platform.
This third-party server may, in turn, be located abroad, which makes VPNs especially popular for accessing Netflix catalogs from another country (for example, through a server based in the United States to enjoy movies and series available on the American version of Netflix).
The VPN primarily has the effect of hiding the user’s IP address. This series of numbers that allow the Internet user’s Internet box to be identified is camouflaged behind the IP address of the VPN server, the only element communicated to the site finally consulted.
“VPN providers cooperate”
To trace a false bomb threat, and faced with an IP address shared by many users of the same VPN (who go through the same server), the authorities do not lack a solution. Firstly, because the providers of these VPNs themselves usually have access to the identity of their clients. And therefore technical means to identify them.
“When you connect to a VPN, it records your connection data. Thus, most VPNs know which IP address on their network corresponds to a person’s real IP address,” a police source specialized in cyber investigations tells Tech&Co. .
Also according to a police source, VPNs can also monitor one of their clients, always at the request of the authorities and, in particular, a judge.
Although not all VPN services widely communicate their cooperation with authorities, especially for marketing purposes, we regularly find such mentions in their terms of use.
“Our goal is to protect your privacy when you browse the Web, not to preserve your anonymity if you commit crimes,” warns the VPN service from cybersecurity specialist F-Secure.
Passage through Switzerland
As Transport Minister Clément Beaune explained on France Inter on October 22, most of the fake bomb threat emails addressed to airports come from the same address, based in Switzerland and therefore outside the European Union.
But also in this case, if passing through Switzerland can slow down certain investigations, it does not block them. Several treaties, such as the Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest Convention), are intended to be used more widely than simply within the framework of the European Union. The latter was signed, in particular, by Switzerland, which thus cooperates with the authorities of dozens of countries in matters of cybercrime.
“In the context of bomb threats and, therefore, terrorism, we can easily imagine that Switzerland would be obliged to cooperate with French justice,” analyzes the police source specialized in cyber investigations at Tech&Co.
Among the main VPNs based in Switzerland is the company Proton, whose clients have sometimes seen their identity passed to the courts. If Proton assures Tech&Co that it will not “log the IP addresses of users” of its VPN, the company acknowledges having received “requests for information from Swiss authorities originating from foreign authorities” and responds favorably “in circumstances considered valid within the framework of the international mutual legal assistance procedures”. .
Source: BFM TV
