How to Read a VPN Privacy Policy in 60 Seconds
Most privacy policies are written like they were designed to make your eyes slide off the page. Long sentences. Legal words. A lot of "may collect" and "trusted partners." It is tempting to give up and trust the homepage banner.
With a VPN, that is a bad shortcut. You are choosing who gets to see the first hop of your internet traffic. Your internet provider sees less, but the VPN provider sees that you connected. So the privacy policy matters.
The good news is you do not need to read every word. You just need to find a few sections and know which phrases are doing real work.
First, search for the word "logs"
Start with the obvious one. Open the VPN privacy policy and search the page for "log," "logs," and "logging." You are looking for a clear answer to one question: does this VPN keep activity logs?
Activity logs are the scary ones. They can include websites visited, DNS requests, traffic contents, timestamps tied to specific browsing, or the IP addresses you connect to. A privacy-focused VPN should say it does not keep logs of your browsing activity.
But do not stop at the headline. "No logs" can mean different things. Some providers mean no browsing history. Others still keep connection logs, device identifiers, approximate location, bandwidth usage, crash reports, or payment records.
Then check what they collect anyway
Every real service collects something. Even a lean VPN may need an email address, payment status, support messages, server load data, or a device limit counter. That is normal.
The question is whether the policy separates normal account data from browsing data. A clean VPN privacy policy should make that distinction in plain language.
Look for answers to these:
- Do they store your original IP address? A VPN may need it briefly to make the connection work, but storing it long-term is a different claim.
- Do they log DNS requests? DNS is basically the list of domains your apps and browser ask for. If a provider logs DNS, that is browsing history by another name.
- Do they share data with advertisers? A paid VPN should not need ad tracking to make the business work.
- How long do they keep data? "We collect connection metadata" is less helpful than "we delete it after X hours" or "we do not store it." Retention matters.
The California Department of Justice gives the same basic advice for privacy policies: look at what personal information is collected and how it is used. That simple rule works well for VPNs too.
Watch for vague promises
The FTC says companies have to live up to their privacy promises. That is useful, but it does not make vague promises useful to you.
Words like "military-grade," "anonymous," and "bank-level security" are marketing. They sound comforting, but they do not tell you what gets stored.
Better phrases are boring and specific. Things like "we do not log websites visited," "we do not store DNS queries," or "we do not sell personal information." Even better is when the company explains what it does collect and why.
Independent audits can help too, especially for no-log claims. They are not magic, and they depend on the scope of the audit, but a real outside review is better than a trust-me badge on a pricing page.
One more thing: read the business model. Free VPNs have to pay for servers somehow. If the product is free and the policy talks a lot about partners, analytics, advertising, or sharing, slow down.
A VPN privacy policy does not need to be perfect. It needs to be understandable. You should be able to answer: what do they collect, what do they not collect, who gets it, and how long do they keep it?
If the answer is buried, vague, or full of loopholes, that is your answer.
If you want the simple version: 99¢ VPN is $11.88/year for one WireGuard device. No giant ad budget, no confusing bundle, and no need to pretend privacy should cost more than lunch.
Written by the person who runs 99¢ VPN. Not a lawyer. Just someone who thinks privacy policies should be readable before you trust a company with your traffic.