VPN providers mask real server locations in US/UK data centres

According to Codamail, Steve Gielda has updated his research on VPN infrastructure and its privacy implications, summarising a study that traced VPN providers to hosting companies and datacentres. The analysis covered 50 VPN providers and identified 6,429 unique /24 network blocks, all resolved to a hosting provider via Team Cymru ASN DNS.

It notes that 41 of the 50 providers use M247 (UK) or Datacamp/CDN77 (UK) or both, with those hosting companies renting rack space in buildings owned mainly by Equinix and Digital Realty in the US. A striking 73% of VPN server IPs geolocate to a different country than where the hosting network is registered, with many servers in exotic locations physically located in US or UK datacenters.

Five parent companies control 8 of the 11 major brands, including Nord Security owning NordVPN and Surfshark, and Kape Technologies owning ExpressVPN, CyberGhost and Private Internet Access, while Proton VPN, Mullvad and Windscribe remain independently owned. The piece argues that at the infrastructure level, competition exists mainly at the marketing layer, while the network layer shows convergence across the same hosting stacks.