Swedish ISP Offers Customers Free VPN

Swedish Internet Service Provider Bahnhof is offering to protect its customer’s internet privacy by introducing its own free VPN service, a first for an ISP. Bahnhof have teamed up with digital rights group 5^th of July Foundation, who will run the VPN service. Since the foundation is not an ISP, only working on behalf of one, it is under no obligation to store and release customer data. They clarified their position in a blog post on Sunday:

When a Bahnhof customer wants to surf via our servers they connect via PPTP. We at the foundation have no idea about who these customers are. We do not have any information about them, no name or address. We just check whether this (for us) unknown surfer should be permitted to connect via our servers…

The Foundation uses its own hardware and own technicians. Bahnhof has no access to our machines, they have no way of knowing what their customers are doing after handing them over to our servers.

Back in October, Bahnhof’s CEO John Karlung made it clear that his company would be resisting Sweden’s new data retention law, initially refusing to release customer data to law enforcement authorities. On Sunday, the company changed their strategy, agreeing to comply with customer data requests, but while offering Bahnhof’s customers with the option of anonymising their data through a new gratis VPN service.

Source: GIGAOM