What now? "In response to the new Indian data regulation laws, Surfshark is shutting down its servers in India," the Virtual Private Network (VPN) service provider said in a blog post dated June 7. Déjà vu: This development comes a few days after ExpressVPN announced that it will remove its Indian-based VPN servers for the same reason. Back then, we wrote that this could set the stage for other VPN providers to follow suit, and it looks like it did. (story below) What data regulation law? It's not exactly a "data regulation law" as both Surfshark and ExpressVPN refer to it as, but rather a cybersecurity directive issued by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) on April 28. The directive, among other things, requires VPN service providers to maintain detailed information on customers such as their names, contact details, the purpose of using the service, IP address, etc, for a period of at least five years and possibly logs of web activity for a period of 180 days. Why is Surfshark not happy with the directive? "Surfshark proudly operates under a strict “no logs” policy, so such new requirements go against the core ethos of the company. A VPN is an online privacy tool, and Surfshark was founded to make it as easy to use for the common users as possible. The infrastructure that Surfshark runs on has been configured in a way that respects the privacy of our users and we will not compromise our values – or…
