Private Internet Access against FBI PIA again winsByDeepak Parihar-June 7, 2018 “3/3.1223.jpg” This is the second time that PIA has had to prove its mettle in a federal court and this is their second consecutive win. Obviously, VPNs including PIA do not store the logs of internet activities of the users. A hacking trial for VPN provider Private Internet Access (PIA) in San Jose federal court has done it again. The case has shown that online activities can not be linked to the identity of the user if the user is on a VPN which was PIA in this case. This is the second time any such claim against PIA has been brought forward. The M., 34, is Back in April 2017 following an investigation by the FBI, Colby who is from San Francisco was indicted. This was when a hacking offense was perpetrated by the federal court in San Jose in connection with several local media websites private owned by Embaradero Media Group. The Almanac and Palo Alto Weekly were among the major websites. Colby was accused of intentional damage to a computer and attempted intrusion into digital property. In July 2015 Colby illegally accessed Embarcadero Media’s email accounts as per the case. This was followed by Guy Fawkes ‘ association with ‘ Anonymous ‘ in September 2015. The popular message-‘ Unbalanced journalism for profit at the expense of human rights. Almanac’s delivered to you. ‘ was left in the hacked email account inbox. In the aforementioned case, FBI submitted evidence against PIA allegedly used by the hackers to operate the email accounts of Embarcadro Media. This evidence was also coupled with the testimony of London Trust Media’s general counsel, John Allan Arsenault, the owner of Private Internet Access. Arsenault told the court that, in response to the allegations, he was unable to produce any useful information, as VPNs do not retain logs of internet activities of users. He also added that PIA has the same logging structure as most other VPNs, and does not record the names and addresses of customers. ‘ While ‘ he said ‘ the PIA accepts the payment through several modes including cryptocurrencies, the only information that PIA retains is the email address. There is no sign that Ross Colby signed up to PIA with any of his two known email IDs. ‘ There are plenty of other testimonials of this case that might interest people if they are concerned about their internet security and VPNs. But the outcome of this case has been for PIA. This is now the second time that PIA has advocated having a ‘ no-logging policy ‘ in court and apparently sticking to that. Usually these allegations against VPN services are difficult to prove, and could bring down any type of service provider. These serious allegations could also lead to complete banning of the services. Nonetheless PIA came out of all these allegations of hacking positively. There is however another angle to this incident which tells us that if VPNs are involved in a case as big as this one IP address is just one side of the equation. Other sides always play the major role. We at Technadu like always hoping the truth will win. In the meantime you can continue to use PIA.