The "First VPN" (1vpns) takedown is a terrifying reminder of how meaningless "No-Logs" claims are on
I’m sure a lot of you saw the breaking news today about Europol dismantling "First VPN" (1vpns), which was heavily marketed on cybercrime forums.
But the most insane detail from the report isn't just the seizure—it’s the fact that French and Dutch investigators secretly compromised and accessed their entire backend infrastructure all the way back in December 2021. For nearly 5 years, it was a literal honeypot. Every single user connection, real IP address, and telemetry piece was logged and is now being handed over to global intelligence agencies.
It really highlights a massive flaw in how people view privacy tools. A provider can scream "strict zero-logs policy" all day long, but if law enforcement successfully compromises the hypervisor or root infrastructure from the inside, those code-level architectures mean absolutely nothing.
What's your takeaway from this? Do you think there’s any realistic way for a commercial provider to genuinely protect users against deep multi-year infrastructure infiltration, or is bare-metal self-hosting with highly secure, obfuscated protocols (like VLESS/Xray setups) the only real buffer left?