I signed up for a 3-year subscription with Surfshark. I only log onto Surfshark when I’m downloading Movie & TV torrents.
Surfshark sent me an email saying my account has been blocked because I violated their TOS and I’m not able to get a refund.
I thought of reporting Surfshark to the Better Business Bureau. However, I have a friend who is an attorney and he read the TOS and pointed out two things,
“Use our Services for any illegal use, such as transmitting any illegal material that would constitute a criminal offense as per the local, state, national or international law or regulation;”
“Use the Service for anything other than lawful purposes;”
He said I was using their services to illegally download Movie and TV torrents and they have every right to terminate your account for this.
You need to find a vpn service that does not log your information. Use ProtonVPN, TorGuard, and whatever else. Do not be influenced by your favorite creators and what vpn they recommend.
How do they know what you’re downloading unless they are monitoring your IP. It has a No Logs Policy,so again,how does it know what you download?
From their site: What do you get up to while connected to Surfshark? No one knows. We don’t monitor, track, or store what you do online. No activity logs. Whatever you do stays with you.
The Better Business Bureau is a private business that allows pay-for-A-ratings. It is the boomer version of ‘Yelp for millennials’: majority of businesses don’t care and it has no meaningful impact on getting a resolution with most of them.
It’s good for the sub to know of SurfShark’s terrible privacy practices though. Thanks for sharing.
With that said, the Better Business Bureau is the biggest waste of time someone can do when looking for help. They are a private business that holds absolutely zero authority. They are Yelp before Yelp. Companies pay to be an “accredited member,” and can pay to remove negative reviews. They are an enormous scam.
Generally speaking: if you need help with something, contact your state’s Department of Consumer Protection. If they don’t have a specific department with that name, email your Attorney General’s office.
Also, I know a lot of people are commenting on TOS. In this case, they are likely correct due to the nature of your downloading. Again generally speaking, in the event a company’s TOS violates any state or federal protection law, it would not supersede the law. Even if legal but it’s a grey area, a lot of companies will be more inclined to meet your demands rather than draw attention to their shady policies. So sometimes seeking help from one of the agencies I mentioned may still help you. Like I said though, in this case, you will be fighting an uphill battle as most likely the TOS sides with the law on copywritten content. Sounds like you not only violated their TOS but possibly also a law or two. I still wish you all the best and hope for the best outcome.
God, I was going to switch and wasnt worried the service would charge me for renewal cause the credit card expired. Somehow they managed to charge my current credit card (maybe it was listed as secondary or something) and the price seemed alright. I was going to cancel and resub with a new account originally because promo price seemed better.
Now I’m really regretting not contacting the company directly to cancel.
PIA was my first real VPN many many years ago and I think it was really cheap back then when VPNs were not that popular. Now, I’m using Windscribe as my main VPN service.
Surfshark guarantees a strict no-logs policy for Surfshark services, meaning that your activities using Surfshark services are provided by an automated technical process, are not monitored, recorded, logged, stored, or passed to any third party in any way.
We do not store connection time stamps, session information, used bandwidth, traffic logs, IP addresses, or any other data in any form.
There is an automated system that checks for any ToS breaks and blocks the account.
It means that a VPN doesn’t keep usage logs. In other words, a “no-logs VPN” doesn’t log your online activity — browsing history, used bandwidth, your network traffic, your IP address, browsing history, or DNS queries.
It seems if they notice suspicious activity it will be picked up without keeping logs. This would seem to do with downloading and not browsing data so it would still be unlikely for them to identify a user unless suspicious activity is picked up the automated system