VPN providers in India required to keep logs under a new law that took effect on June 27th, 2022.

All VPN providers with servers in India are required to maintain logs of customer names, IP addresses and usage patterns.

Data centers, virtual private server (VPS) providers, cloud service providers, and virtual private network (VPN) service providers must comply with new data retention regulations.

Service providers are required to maintain logs for five years with the following pieces of information:

• Validated names of subscribers/customers hiring the services
• Period of hire, including dates.
• IPs allotted to / being used by the users
• Email address and IP address, plus time stamp used at the time of registration.
• The purpose for hiring services.
• Validated address and contact numbers.
• Ownership pattern of the subscribers/customers hiring services.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) directive includes similar requirements for virtual asset service providers, virtual asset exchange providers, and custodian wallet providers. Exchanges and custodial wallet providers are required to maintain all Know Your Customer (KYC) information and records of financial transactions for five years.

Removal of servers:

In response to the regulations, some VPN providers like Surfshark to shut down VPN servers in India in response to new rules, PIA and ExpressVPN have already removed their servers in India.

Virtual server locations is what is being used, which basically means people will think you are coming from India, when you infact are on a US server or on one in Singapore.