Mullvad, the Swedish firm behind Mullvad VPN (digital personal community), says police walked away with nothing after trying to grab computer systems from its workplace. In keeping with an replace on Mullvad’s website, the authorities left and didn’t take something after it knowledgeable them that the corporate doesn’t retailer buyer information.
“We argued they’d no motive to anticipate finding what they have been on the lookout for and any seizures would due to this fact be unlawful below Swedish legislation,” Mullvad writes. “After demonstrating that that is certainly how our service works and them consulting the prosecutor they left with out taking something and with none buyer data.”
A VPN is a service that permits you to securely browse the web utilizing an encrypted connection to a personal server. It hides figuring out data, comparable to your IP handle, from third events, making it doable to entry geo-blocked web sites or get a extra personal shopping expertise. In contrast to many different VPN companies, Mullvad doesn’t require an e mail handle to enroll and as an alternative generates a random account quantity for all customers.
Mullvad says that is the primary time in its 14 years of working a VPN that police have issued a search warrant, and firm CEO Jan Jonsson tells The Verge he doesn’t “know precisely what they have been on the lookout for.” Even when the authorities had seized its servers, Jonsson says that police wouldn’t have discovered something as a consequence of its strict insurance policies towards protecting information. The Verge reached out to Swedish authorities with a request for extra data however didn’t instantly hear again.
“We discover it peculiar that the Nationwide Operations Division (NOA) of the Swedish Police make this search warrant go to now, for the primary time in our 14-year historical past,” Jonsson tells The Verge. “They need to know by now how our service works. Our enterprise is all concerning the battle towards information retention and we by no means retailer any exercise logs of any variety.”