Fake bomb threats: no, a VPN will not protect you if you commit a crime in France!

Despite their promises of anonymity on the Internet, VPNs do not constitute a guarantee of impunity on the Web, especially when they decide to cooperate with public authorities and authorities, and incidentally, you have committed an offense or a crime.

VPNs, virtual private networks, are ever more popular, with some guarantee of online privacy protection offered. They promise to hide your IP and make your activities almost impossible to track.

But current events are catching up with this concept. Friday October 20, a 16-year-old teenager was arrested in France after sending false bomb threats to his high school. To avoid being identified, he saw fit to use a VPN.

If VPN providers cooperate, your anonymity will quickly shrink to nothing

As you will have understood, using a VPN did not help the young man protect himself from the authorities. You should keep in mind that VPNs are still services that route your internet traffic through a third-party server, thus hiding your real IP address. A site you visit sees the IP address of the VPN server rather than yours.

But when several users go through the same VPN server, the IP address becomes shared, which offers even more solutions for being tracked. The authorities therefore have a way of tracing the trail back to the user.

VPN providers often have access to their users’ data, including their real IP address. They generally cooperate with the authorities and respond to legal requests which, it should be noted, always come from a judicial police officer or the public prosecutor. Although VPNs don’t always advertise their cooperation with authorities, it is in their terms of service. Obviously, if you live a relatively quiet life, the VPN is still of interest.

Switzerland, a paradoxical example in terms of VPN

In another case, that of the bomb threats targeting airports which we spoke to you about this October 23 on Clubic, it is Switzerland which is targeted. If a single email address seems to have caused a large number of evacuations in France in recent days, passing through the Swiss country does not guarantee anonymity.

The Budapest Convention is one of the texts that allow international cooperation to combat cybercrime. And guess who signed this text? Switzerland, obviously. Many VPNs are now installed in the country, for example the famous Proton, known to be very respectful of privacy.

Since we are talking about Proton, the service acknowledges having already responded favorably to requests from Swiss authorities from foreign authorities. However, it ensures that it does not record the IP addresses of its users when they use a VPN. In any case, absolute anonymity on the Internet today remains a pipe dream for everyone.

Source : BFMTV