The lawmakers of the United States have now asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to address deceptive and abusive data practices by hundreds companies providing Virtual Private Network (VPN) services for the individuals.
A VPN is an online service that is responsible to give the users more security when they connect to the internet. Although, the lawmakers said the consumer VPN industry has been rife with the deceptive advertising and abusive data practices.
The letter from the US lawmakers describe many abusive practices in the consumer VPN industry, which includes promotion of false and misleading claims regarding their services, along with selling user data and providing user activity logs to the law enforcement, despite promises of complete anonymity.
The lawmakers said they urge the users to use their authority to take enforcement actions against the problematic actors in the VPN industry, along with focusing particularly on those that mostly engage in deceptive advertising and practices of data collection.
These new rules, which are to be effective from September 25, 2022, require the VPN service providers along with data centres and providers of cloud services, and to store information like names, contact numbers, email ids, and IP addresses of their customers for five years.
