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Leading anonymization service CyberGhost VPN has published a Transparency Report
detailing personal data requests and complaints from police authorities, lawyers, website
operators and individuals
Bucharest, Romania, 14 th of May 2014

The number of complaints and requests to disclose VPN users’ personal data received from law
enforcement, companies and individuals more than tripled in 2013 from the previous year, and
has grown 8-fold in the first quarter of 2014 compared to the similar period of 2013, reveals the
Transparency Report released by CyberGhost VPN, a leading provider of anonymization
services.
CyberGhost VPN, one of the fastest-growing VPN services in the world, has released its first
Transparency Report revealing the types of complaints and requests for disclosure of user
information received from authorities, companies and individuals between July 2011, when the
company was founded, and March 2014. The company plans to update the report at the end of
each quarter.
Most requests and complaints are related to alleged infringements of the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA) such as illegal downloads. The company has also received complaints
regarding various supposedly malicious acts such as spamming, cyber-attacks and hacking
attempts, as well as police requests related to cybercrime investigations, according to the
report.

One of the few existing anonymization services with a ‘no logging policy,’ which means it keeps
no records of its users or their online activities, CyberGhost VPN has become one of the first
VPN companies to provide users with statistics regarding requests received from investigating
authorities, lawyers, businesses and individuals.
According to data from the company’s Transparency Report, the number of complaints and
requests to disclose user data more than tripled year on year: there were 105 requests per
100,000 users in 2013, compared to just 30 requests per 100,000 users in 2012. The number of
complaints and requests per 100,000 users received in the first quarter of 2014 is eight times
higher compared with the first quarter of 2013, and 20 times higher than the corresponding
period of 2012: CyberGhost registered 265 complaints per 100,000 users in the first three
months of this year, against 33 complaints per 100,000 users in the first quarter of the previous
year, and just 13 requests per 100,000 users in the similar period of 2012.
“When we receive requests to disclose user information, we reply every time that we are a VPN
service operating in Romania, so according to the local law we are not obliged to maintain logs,
so we do not keep any records, which means we can’t help identify any of our users,” said Ana
Schiopu, CyberGhost VPN Product Manager.
Data from CyberGhost’s Transparency Report shows that in 2013 the company received more
than 2,100 copyright-related requests to disclose user information or take some kind of action
against CyberGhost VPN users. Last year there were 96 requests and complaints about
supposedly malicious acts such as email spamming, cyber-attacks and hacking attempts, and
18 requests from law enforcement agencies related to police investigations.

Most requests which came last year from the US and the UK were DMCA-related: 1,308
requests. Additionally, companies and individuals in the US and the UK sent 30 complaints

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