After ExpressVPN, Surfshark is shutting down servers in India over government guidelines

• Surfshark has announced that it is shutting down its servers in India, making it the second major VPN provider to do so.
• This is in response to the Indian’s government’s guidelines for virtual private network (VPN) service providers.
• Earlier this month, ExpressVPN had shut down its servers in the country.

Popular VPN provider Surfshark has now announced that it is shutting down its servers in India, in response to the Indian government’s policies regarding user data retention.

The Indian government had released guidelines on April 28 directing companies offering virtual private network (VPN) services in the country to record and store the details of their users.

Recording and sharing user data goes against the basic principles of VPN and companies have expressed their reservations over the new guidelines.

“Surfshark proudly operates under a strict “no logs” policy, so such new requirements go against the core ethos of the company,” the company said in its official statement.

“The infrastructure that Surfshark runs on has been configured in a way that respects the privacy of our users and we will not compromise our values – or our technical base,” the company added.

This comes just a few days after ExpressVPN announced that it had removed its servers from the country.

What will be the impact on users?

Surfshark has said that the servers will be shut down after the new rules come into effect and users will be able to continue to use its India servers till then. The new guidelines will come into effect from June 27.

Once the company’s Indian servers are shut down, users will be able to use its virtual Indian servers that are physically located in Singapore and London. This is similar to what ExpressVPN had announced earlier.

Indian users will not be impacted by the new guidelines and will be able to connect to any server outside the country.

Surfshark in its post has added that the new VPN guidelines will have an adverse impact on the IT sector and the privacy of users in the country.

“Taking such radical action that highly impacts the privacy of millions of people living in India will most likely be counterproductive and strongly damage the sector’s growth in the country,” the company added.

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