The Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2 Coalition) has announced that its VPN Trust Initiative (VTI) has released a new set of principles that will help VPN providers deliver services in alignment with expert-informed industry best practices.
The VTI Principles offer a comprehensive set of best practices for VPN providers aimed at bolstering consumer confidence and provider accountability to ultimately increase VPN adoption worldwide.
The new set of principles support VPN awareness, adoption and access. They have also been designed to help protect the privacy and security of VPN users, offer practical policy guidelines for providers and ensure policymakers, regulators and the wider market have access to criteria for evaluating VPN services. The VTI Principles focus on five key areas: security, privacy, advertising practices, disclosure and transparency and social responsibility.
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Vice president of ExpressVPN Harold Li praised the VTI Principles in a blog post, saying:
“The VTI Principles sets a new benchmark for VPN companies so that we can collectively improve as an industry. We are giving consumers greater confidence to use VPNs to enjoy the internet more freely, privately, and securely.”
VTI Principles
The VPN Trust Initiative first launched in December of last year as an industry-led and member-driven consortium of VPN business leaders focused on building understanding, strengthening trust and mitigating risk for VPN users and providers.
ExpressVPN, NordVPN, VyprVPN, Surfshark and NetProtect were the founding members of the VTI but since last year other VPN companies have joined the initiative including Ivacy VPN, CloudFlare, Mysterium Network, GoldenFrog, Hide.me and WeVPN.
Co-founder of NordVPN Tom Okman explained how the VTI Principles can help bring clarity to the rapidly expanding VPN industry, saying;
“The release of VTI Principles and Standards sets a bar for the whole industry. In the last few years, the number of VPN service providers has skyrocketed. From the societal point of view, this is a positive turn, giving people freedom of choice on how and by whom their data should be handled. However, the rapid industry growth has also brought a lack of clarity. VPN providers operate in different ways, and not necessarily all of them apply the best standards when developing their service. VTI understood that and sought to create a set of principles: guidelines on which the services could rely. We hope that these principles will help the industry to become more trustworthy, transparent and secure.”
With the release of its new principles, the VTI remains dedicated to creating and releasing resources to serve as a singular voice that provides appropriate and accurate industry-led stewardship.
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