With work from home becoming a common practice and certain platforms putting a limit on video quality, several smartphone users were using VPNs for a secure and improved experience. How wrong they were! It seems like even VPNs are not completely secure. It turns out that the user data of seven Hong Kong based VPN providers has been leaked online. 

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According to a vpnMentor research team, led by Noam Rotem, about 1.2TB data of around 20 million users has been leaked. These VPN services include - UFO VPN, FAST VPN, Free VPN, Super VPN, Flash VPN, Secure VPN and Rabbit VPN. 

The team of researchers uncovered the server and found Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data collected by these VPN apps has been leaked online. The more worrying part of the development is that most of these VPN services claim to offer “no-log” VPNs. This means that they claim of not keeping records of any user activity on their network. 

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Most of these apps have millions of downloads on Google Play Store with really impressive ratings. 

Super VPN developed by Hong Kong based Nownetmobi has a rating of 4.6 stars on the Google Play Store and 4.9 stars on the Apple App Store. UFO VPN developed by Hong Kong based Dreamfii HK Limited has clocked 4.5 stars on the Google Play Store and 4.8 stars on the Apple App Store.

The vpnMentor research team say they have reached out to all the VPN app developers who are listed here and also the Hong Kong’s Computer Emergency Response Team (HKCERT) with the details.

The development comes days after security researcher Bob Diachenko revealed that as many as 894GB worth of records in an unsecured Elasticsearch cluster that belonged to UFO VPN were easily available for unauthorized access.