Which VPN has been court-tested?
Short answer
Three major VPNs have been court-tested with their no-logs claims surviving. Private Internet Access (PIA) had no data to hand over to US courts in 2016 and 2018. ExpressVPN had no data when Turkish authorities seized servers in 2017. Mullvad had no data when Swedish police raided their office in 2023.
Court-tested is the strongest privacy guarantee available, but it's bounded — a provider can change its architecture after a successful test. Each case is point-in-time evidence, not perpetual proof.
PIA — United States, 2016 and 2018
In 2016, the FBI subpoenaed Private Internet Access for records related to a hoax bomb threat investigation. PIA produced no logs because none existed. The case proceeded without VPN-derived evidence.
In 2018, a similar subpoena returned the same result. Two independent confirmations in two years that the architecture was real.
ExpressVPN — Turkey, 2017
Turkish authorities physically seized ExpressVPN servers in Istanbul during the investigation into the assassination of Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov. The seized servers contained no user-identifying data. Turkish prosecutors confirmed publicly that ExpressVPN's no-logs claim held up.
Mullvad — Sweden, 2023
In April 2023, Swedish police raided Mullvad's Gothenburg office under a search warrant. Mullvad's CEO documented the raid in a public blog post the same day. Police left without user data because the architecture stores none.
Mullvad is the most recent and most public court-tested case. It is also the strongest, because it happened in 2023 with current infrastructure — the others are older.
Last verified: 2026-05-05
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