I\'m curious about how the process of signing up for a VPN service with a short

Question

I'm curious about how the process of signing up for a VPN service with a short lived 'disposable' email address would work.

Firstly, what benefit (if any) is there to creating the account anonymously?

Is there ever any need for a VPN service to communicate with a user? And how does account renewal work if original email account doesn't exist anymore? I'm assuming the user would just signup for a new account as opposed to renewing?

I'm also curious to know what the situation is if your VPN provider hands your IP address along with timestamps to an authority investigating certain activity. If the user has paid for the service with bitcoin or a prepaid card etc. and have signed up with a disposable email, I assume the user is still accountable for any activity from their IP address or how does that work?

Explanation / Answer

"Accountability" will not change - you are still accountable for your activity. But, by doing what you mentioned (anonymous payment, disposable email), it will be very difficult for the investigators to "attribute" your activity to you through the administrative information provided to them by the VPN provider if you also obfuscate your IP by constantly changing your IP (hoping from one free wifi to another), piggy-backing on another's IP (cracking someone's wifi network) or something similar. Without obfuscating your IP, investigators can easily trace your activity through the VPN provider and your ISP.

But that's just the VPN provider's side. Authorities have other ways to attribute your activity to you other than the administrative details from the VPN provider. Browser fingerprinting comes to mind as well as other information that can be gleaned or aggregated to point to you.

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