Why a no-log VPN still cannot make you anonymous.
State of things on 18 October 2026: Pevnost is in private beta. The first server, in Hluboká nad Vltavou, is live with our DNS resolver inside the tunnel at 10.8.0.1. Accounts are paid by bank transfer; Bitcoin and Lightning open as soon as our node finishes syncing, Monero and cash by post later. Windows app 0.2.2 beta and Android app 0.1.0 beta (APK) are on the Apps page; iOS and macOS use the official WireGuard app. Last reviewed 18 October 2026.
We run a VPN that keeps no logs, and we would like you to pay for it. That makes the following an awkward thing to write, which is exactly why it needs writing: a VPN, ours included, does not make you anonymous. It changes who can see one specific thing about you. If you understand precisely what that thing is, a VPN is a useful tool. If you believe it is an invisibility cloak, you will eventually do something with it that you would not have done without it, and the cloak will not be there.
What a VPN actually does
Without a VPN, your internet provider sees every address you connect to and, unless you have changed your DNS, every site name you resolve. Every site you visit sees your provider‑assigned address, which places you in a city and ties together everything done from your household that day. With a VPN, your provider sees one encrypted connection to our node and nothing inside it; the sites you visit see our node's address, shared with every other customer on it, and our DNS resolver answers your name lookups inside the tunnel. That is the whole change. Two parties lose one piece of information each. A third party, us, gains the ability to see your traffic flow and chooses, verifiably we hope, not to record it.
Everything below is a way you are identified that this change does not touch.
1. You log in
The moment you sign into an account, the site knows who you are, from any address on earth. Your e‑mail provider, your social accounts, your bank, your shopping accounts: the VPN hides your location from them, nothing more. If you keep the same browser session open while you move between "anonymous" browsing and your real accounts, the sites that run advertising code on both see both. A VPN cannot separate those identities. A separate browser profile, or a separate browser, can.
2. Your browser is unique
Browsers hand out a long list of details on request: screen size, fonts, installed languages, time zone, graphics hardware, how exactly they render text and shapes. Taken together these identify a browser with high confidence, without any cookie and regardless of address. Changing your IP changes none of them. Browsers built for privacy deliberately make everyone look the same; mainstream browsers in their default configuration do not. Also note the time zone: a browser in the Prague time zone exiting from a Prague address tells the site nothing new, but the same browser exiting from somewhere far away is more noticeable, not less.
3. Cookies and local storage survive the tunnel
Whatever a site stored in your browser before you connected is still there after. Turning on a VPN mid‑session does not reset anything; the ad network that tagged you this morning recognises the tag this evening from our address and simply adds "also uses a VPN" to the profile. Clear site data or use a fresh profile when you want a fresh start, and start the tunnel before opening the browser.
4. Payment trails
You can pay for Pevnost without telling us your name; we built the payment flow around that. But every purchase you make through the tunnel with a card, a bank account or a delivery address identifies you to the merchant and to the payment processor, with our address attached as a footnote. The same applies to anything that needs a phone number.
5. Traffic correlation
Encryption hides content. It does not hide that packets exist, when, or how many. Someone who can observe your line at home and also observe our node's uplink, or the server you are talking to, can match the timing and sizes of the flows and conclude that the two ends belong together. This takes an adversary with reach into two networks, which in practice means a carrier or a state, not a website. For most people it is not the threat. For the people it is a threat to, a single‑hop VPN of any kind is the wrong tool; onion routing with several independent hops exists for exactly this case, at the cost of speed.
6. The device itself
Your phone reports to its manufacturer and to every app with background permission; your laptop's operating system checks in with its vendor; messaging apps are tied to your phone number. All of that happens through the tunnel and reaches its destination with the account information it always carried. A VPN prevents your ISP from seeing those connections. It does not make the connections anonymous to the companies on the other end.
7. Us
We keep no logs, the nodes boot a public image into RAM with no writable disk, and the transparency page and canary are there so that you can watch whether that changes. But you are trusting a company to behave, and a company can be compelled, compromised or simply wrong. We think the way to earn that trust is to make the claim checkable and the design such that even a dishonest version of us would have little to hand over (see what a seized node yields). Trusting us is still a decision you make. A tool that required no trust at all would not be a VPN.
So what is it good for?
Quite a lot, as long as the goal is right. Stopping your provider, and anyone who buys or requisitions its data, from seeing where you go. Stopping the sites you visit from learning your home address and tying together everyone in your household. Keeping your DNS questions away from the resolver on the hotel Wi‑Fi. Not having your traffic sampled on a network you do not control. Being one of many behind a shared address instead of one address per household. These are real, everyday gains, and they are the ones a no‑log VPN delivers. "Nobody can ever find out who I am" is not on the list, and anyone who puts it there is selling you something.
If you want more than that
- Use a separate browser profile, or a privacy‑focused browser, for anything you do not want tied to your name. Never log into a real account from it.
- Start the tunnel before the browser, and enable the kill switch or always‑on setting described in the leak test guide.
- Assume anything you pay for, sign up for or type your phone number into knows who you are.
- If your adversary is a state and the stakes are personal, use onion routing and read its documentation about what it can and cannot do; do not rely on any VPN alone.