IPVanish VPN (also known as IPVanish) is a US-based

VPN service A virtual private network (VPN) service is a proxy server marketed to help users bypass Internet censorship such as geo-blocking and users who want to protect their communications against data profiling or MitM attacks on hostile networks. ...

owned by

Ziff Davis Ziff Davis, Inc. is an American digital media and internet company. Founded in 1927 by William Bernard Ziff Sr. and Bernard George Davis, the company primarily owns technology- and health-oriented media websites, online shopping-related servi ...

. The service has applications for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, Android,

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

Fire TV Amazon Fire TV (formerly stylized as amazon fireTV) is a line of digital media players and microconsoles developed by Amazon since November 2014. The devices are small network appliances that deliver digital audio and video content streamed via ...

Apple TV Apple TV is a digital media player and a microconsole developed and marketed by Apple. It is a small piece of networking hardware that sends received media data such as video and audio to a TV or external display. Its media services include ...

Android TV Android TV is an operating system that runs on smart TVs and related entertainment devices including soundbars, set-top boxes, and digital media players. Developed by Google, it is a closed-source Android distribution. Android TV features a u ...

Chromebook Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a line of laptops, desktops, tablets and all-in-one computers that run ChromeOS, a proprietary operating system developed by Google. Chromebooks are optimised for web access. They al ...

, and

Apple Vision Pro The Apple Vision Pro is a mixed reality, mixed-reality headset developed by Apple Inc., Apple. It was announced on June 5, 2023, at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and was released first in the US, then in global territories thr ...

. Manual setup is available for routers, NAS devices, and other platforms.

History

IPVanish was founded in 2012 by Mudhook Media Inc, an independent subsidiary of

Highwinds Network Group Highwinds Network Group, Inc. (Highwinds) was a company founded in 2002 that offered IP services including content delivery network (CDN), cloud storage, IP transit, transport and colocation. The company headquarters were located in Winter Park, ...

Orlando, Florida Orlando ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Orange County, Florida, United States. The city proper had a population of 307,573 at the 2020 census, making it the fourth-most populous city in Florida behind Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville ...

. In 2017,

was acquired by CDN company

StackPath StackPath was an American edge computing platform provider headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Its founding team was led by Lance Crosby, who also co-founded SoftLayer Technologies, acquired by IBM in 2013. Acquisitions * MaxCDN ( CDN), 2016 * St ...

which included IPVanish as part of the acquisition. In 2019, IPVanish was acquired by

J2 Global J2 Global, Inc. was an American technology holding company based in Los Angeles, California. The company provided Internet services through two divisions: Business Cloud Services and Digital Media. History J2 Global was founded in December 199 ...

with their NetProtect business.

Cooperation with Homeland Security

According to a June 2018 article by ''

TorrentFreak __NOTOC__ TorrentFreak (TF) is a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the BitTorrent protocol and file sharing, as well as on copyright infringement and digital rights. The website was started in November 2005 by a Dutchma ...

'', court documents showed that IPVanish handed over

personal information Personal data, also known as personal information or personally identifiable information (PII), is any information related to an identifiable person. The abbreviation PII is widely used in the United States, but the phrase it abbreviates has fou ...

about a customer to the

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior, home, or public security ministries in other countries. Its missions invol ...

(HSI) in 2016. The customer was suspected of sharing

child pornography Child pornography (also abbreviated as CP, also called child porn or kiddie porn, and child sexual abuse material, known by the acronym CSAM (underscoring that children can not be deemed willing participants under law)), is Eroticism, erotic ma ...

on an

IRC IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat ...

network. The information, which allowed HSI to identify the customer, consisted of the customer's name, his email address, details of his VPN subscription, his real IP address (

Comcast Comcast Corporation, formerly known as Comcast Holdings,Before the AT&T Broadband, AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation, not th ...

) "as well as dates and times econnected to, and disconnected from, the IRC network.” The logging of the customer's IP address and connection timestamps to the IRC service contradicts IPVanish's privacy policy, which states that " PVanishwill never log any traffic or usage of our VPN." In 2017, IPVanish and its parent company were acquired by

, and its founder and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

, Lance Crosby, claimed that "at the time of the acquisition, ..no logs existed, no logging systems existed and no previous/current/future intent to save logs existed." In 2022, as a Ziff Davis company, IPVanish underwent an independently verified no-logs audit, reaffirming its commitment to user privacy. In 2025, the company completed a second independent audit conducted by Schellman Compliance, further validating its no-logs policy.

Uses

IPVanish funnels the internet traffic of its users through remote servers, obscuring the user's

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...

and

encrypting In cryptography, encryption (more specifically, encoding) is the process of transforming information in a way that, ideally, only authorized parties can decode. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plain ...

data transmitted through the connection. Users can simultaneously connect an unlimited number of devices. Like other VPN services, IPVanish also has the ability to bypass

internet censorship Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as ''Wikipedia.org'', for example) but exceptionally may ...

in most countries. By selecting a server in a region outside of their physical position, VPN users can easily access online content which was not available in their location, or play games that are regionally-restricted due to licensing agreements.

Technical details

Encryption

IPVanish uses the WireGuard and

OpenVPN OpenVPN is a virtual private network (VPN) system that implements techniques to create secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities. It implements both client and server appl ...

technologies in its applications, while the

IKEv2 In computing, Internet Key Exchange (IKE, versioned as IKEv1 and IKEv2) is the protocol used to set up a security association (SA) in the IPsec protocol suite. IKE builds upon the Oakley protocol and ISAKMP.The Internet Key Exchange (IKE), RFC 2 ...

/ IPsec and L2TP connection protocols can also be configured.

PPTP The Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) is an obsolete method for implementing virtual private networks. PPTP has many well known security issues. PPTP uses a TCP control channel and a Generic Routing Encapsulation tunnel to encapsulate P ...

was discontinued in 2022. IPVanish supports the AES (128-bit or 256-bit) specifications, with SHA-256 for authentication and an RSA-2048 handshake.

Servers

IPVanish owns and operates more than 2400 remote servers in over 90+ locations. The largest concentration of VPN servers is located in the United States,

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

, and

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. The company suspended operations in Russia as of July 2016, due to conflicts with the company's zero-log policy and local law. In July 2020, IPVanish removed its servers from Hong Kong, alleging that the

Hong Kong national security law Hong Kong national security legislation may refer to one of the following laws/bills: Laws in force * Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, 2020 national law of C ...

puts

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

under the “same tight internet restrictions that govern mainland China.” IPVanish is headquartered in the United States, which does not have mandatory

data retention Data retention defines the policies of persistent data and records management for meeting legal and business data archival requirements. Although sometimes interchangeable, it is not to be confused with the Data Protection Act 1998. The differe ...

laws.

Recognition

In 2016, Lifehacker AU rated the service as its #1 VPN. In a 2018 review highlighting IPVanish ‘zero logs’ policies and nonprofit support, CNET ranked IPVanish as one of the best VPN services of the year. The reviewer also noted that its integrated plugin for Kodi, the open-source media streaming app, was unique to the VPN industry.

TechRadar ''TechRadar'' is an online technology publication owned by Future plc. It has editorial teams in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia that provide news and reviews of tech products and gadgets. It was launched in 2008 and expanded t ...

rated the service 4 out of 5 stars in their March 2018 review, commending it for its powerful features while criticizing its “lethargic support response”. An annually-updated TorrentFreak article reviewing the logging policies of VPN services lists IPVanish as an anonymous provider.

Tom's Guide ''Tom's Hardware'' is an online publication owned by Future plc and focused on technology. It was founded in 1996 by Thomas Pabst. It provides articles, news, price comparisons, videos and reviews on computer hardware and high technology. The s ...

wrote that the lack of a kill switch on the mobile application "may be a downside for some".

References

{{reflist Virtual private network services