Shillong, June 29: Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma on Friday indirectly touched on an important issue which veers around privacy and security concerns.

Briefing the media Sangma said it’s easy these days to send extortion notes through the social media and keep identities hidden using Virtual Private Network or VPN software like Atlas and others.

So what are VPNs and how do they work

VPNs are private networks that connect a device to a private server and hide the IP address (IP address can identify the location of the device.) Moreover, it disallows the internet service provider or any third party to snoop into the data that is transmitted between the device and the server.

In layman’s terms if a person is surfing a particular website or say sending messages on WhatsApp or any social media, that information would be through the VPN or a tunnel and would not be visible to anyone.

Why VPN

VPN could be used for many reasons. The first reason that comes to mind is obviously what Sangma indicated: hide your identity and carry out nefarious activities like sending extortion notes. But its efficiency is different. Many people like to protect their privacy and would not like anyone snooping into their (plain) conversation.

Others may like to download paid software free through a torrent site and still be undetectable or access the dark web (can be accessed through a specialised web browser. Primarily an anonymous cyber world of drugs, pornography, hacking etc.) People could have different reasons for using VPN, but privacy is the core word.

Is use of VPN legal in India

Like any relationship that hangs by a thread, the answer is complicated: in this case the relationship between privacy and national security. Although VPN are legal in India, some of the features that make it truly private are regulated. VPN companies having services in India have to store name, email address, phone number, IP for five years (for national security reasons, the government argues.)

The digital space in India would go for a drastic change once the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 rules comes into force sometime this year.

Meanwhile, Atlas is just one of the VPN companies that Sangma was referring to, there are a whole lot that come with monthly and annual VPN service subscriptions for users in India.

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