New cybersecurity rules are coming to India and adding requirements for VPN providers. ExpressVPN refuses to comply and prefers to withdraw its servers from the country.
Stay in India, or leave? ExpressVPN has made its choice: it will be exile. In a message posted on June 2 on Twitter, the company announced its departure from the country. More specifically, the company based in the British Virgin Islands is giving up placing servers in this vast country, due to a changing regulatory landscape deemed unfavorable.
The crux of the problem, explains the journalist Soumyarendra Barik, from the Indian Express, lies in cybersecurity rules. VPN providers, like ExpressVPN, must retain some of their customers’ data for five years. ExpressVPN announces its departure a few weeks before the implementation of this framework, scheduled for June 27.
Among the information that VPNs will need to store are customer identities, assigned IP addresses, usage patterns, and other identifying data. It is indicated that these new provisions are there to better fight against crime on the net. However, ExpressVPN prides itself on keeping nothing.
ExpressVPN maintains access in India
De facto, Indian demands appear to conflict with its commercial promise. Rather than reviewing its policy, it is therefore an exodus. ExpressVPN is obviously the first big one to announce the withdrawal of its servers from India. It is possible that other providers with a local presence will follow suit by June 27.
However, ExpressVPN has no intention of withdrawing its offers from the country. Admittedly, it will no longer maintain on-site service, but the formulas must continue. In any case, it is announced that local users will still be able to connect to their VPN services. It remains to be seen how New Delhi will accommodate this bypass, which is not the desired outcome.
Thus, the platform ensures that people in India or who want to contact a service based in India won’t suffer at all of this Internet reorganization: “ You will still be able to connect to an Indian site through physically based virtual server locations in Singapore and the UK, which allow connecting with Indian IP addresses. »
