Terms of Service
Cryptostorm has a long history of pushing past the assumed limits of the possible & providing previously-unavailable levels of privacy protection to our customers.
Our Terms of Service (ToS) are no exception. First, as a precursor of sorts, we established the cryptostorm network to assist people throughout the world in a mature effort to protect individual freedom while on the Internet. You may also label us a network transport provider: this means we pass encrypted packets back and forth, PERIOD. The company does not host content, serve resources, or log anything you are doing - none of that is our business. In fact, as part of our business model we have stood tall and reached out to dissidents in places such as Iran, Tibet, and Cuba (just to name a few), providing free accounts to those trying to get honest current information out to friends, family, and people on the 'net as a whole. We believe these efforts - while not directly profitable to us economically - provide a more than worthwhile return both to the global community, and to the betterment of the Internet. Second, we ask that you don't do anything blatantly dumb while using our service. Please do not send massive volumes of spam through our network. It adds to our workload, and it just ends up getting our IP's blocked from big chunks of IP-space (which means your spam won't arrive anyway). Our network is also not a place to 'hack' from (related: nor are we a good transit path through which to route your DDoS attacks, not even c&c). If you don't know why that's true - and you don't already know how to cover your ass without using a commercial VPN service - then you'd best reconsider what you're doing, because you are in way over your head. Our $0.02. We won't betray you if you do, but there's smarter ways to cover your tracks doing such things. Point being: if you don't already know that, then you shouldn't be hacking or DDoSing anyway. Crawl, walk, run... that sort of thing. Third, we request that you not push any sort of child porn or underage sexual content through our network. The company has always been opposed to it. We're honest and forthright, and we ask that you respect that. We don't packet sniff, log anything at all, or have an 'Abuse Team' (as many of our self-styled "competitors" do, whether they admit it or not) - but we do have a crack staff that will do anything within their power (outside of compromising our company stance on customer privacy) to put a stop to CP pushing across our network. Same goes for terrorist-related activities. Don't, seriously. We're not designed to protect either of those areas of activity - CP or terrorism - and we don't expect to be asked to. Yes, there's plenty of grey areas in those definitions; we get that. But if you're well beyond the grey and you're doing really bad shit, don't use us. We're not morality police and we're not here to enforce the world's laws (nor are we legally obligated to do so - we're not cops and have no desire to be such), but we're also not running this network so you can sell CP or plan to kill people (or other beings). Protip: use Tor. Actually, just don't do either of those things, and the world will be a better place. Again, our $0.02. In conclusion, a valid network access token gains you access to cryptostorm. As a result of our token-based authentication model, there's structurally no way we can "shut off" an individual customer (even if we wanted to, which we don't). As a packet-routing service, we're in the business of (securely) routing authenticated packets - not in "managing customers".
Irrespective of that, we receive hundreds of DMCA letters a week - and respond to them individually with a (mostly) polite explanation of our operational model, cryptographic framerwork, and member-agnostic authentication topology. Most of these letters come from spambots run by shady copytrolls: these spam operations are illegal in numerous global jurisdictions, although of course LEO doesn't prosecute them since they often have strong political connections (rule of law, eh?). We've been explaining the reality of things to spambot copytrolls for more than half a decade, but the "demand letters" for us to "takedown" content we neither host nor control keep on comin'... lol. No matter; our network members have never had to deal with a single one of these DMCA harassment letters... and they never will.
Our Terms of Service (ToS) are no exception. First, as a precursor of sorts, we established the cryptostorm network to assist people throughout the world in a mature effort to protect individual freedom while on the Internet. You may also label us a network transport provider: this means we pass encrypted packets back and forth, PERIOD. The company does not host content, serve resources, or log anything you are doing - none of that is our business. In fact, as part of our business model we have stood tall and reached out to dissidents in places such as Iran, Tibet, and Cuba (just to name a few), providing free accounts to those trying to get honest current information out to friends, family, and people on the 'net as a whole. We believe these efforts - while not directly profitable to us economically - provide a more than worthwhile return both to the global community, and to the betterment of the Internet. Second, we ask that you don't do anything blatantly dumb while using our service. Please do not send massive volumes of spam through our network. It adds to our workload, and it just ends up getting our IP's blocked from big chunks of IP-space (which means your spam won't arrive anyway). Our network is also not a place to 'hack' from (related: nor are we a good transit path through which to route your DDoS attacks, not even c&c). If you don't know why that's true - and you don't already know how to cover your ass without using a commercial VPN service - then you'd best reconsider what you're doing, because you are in way over your head. Our $0.02. We won't betray you if you do, but there's smarter ways to cover your tracks doing such things. Point being: if you don't already know that, then you shouldn't be hacking or DDoSing anyway. Crawl, walk, run... that sort of thing. Third, we request that you not push any sort of child porn or underage sexual content through our network. The company has always been opposed to it. We're honest and forthright, and we ask that you respect that. We don't packet sniff, log anything at all, or have an 'Abuse Team' (as many of our self-styled "competitors" do, whether they admit it or not) - but we do have a crack staff that will do anything within their power (outside of compromising our company stance on customer privacy) to put a stop to CP pushing across our network. Same goes for terrorist-related activities. Don't, seriously. We're not designed to protect either of those areas of activity - CP or terrorism - and we don't expect to be asked to. Yes, there's plenty of grey areas in those definitions; we get that. But if you're well beyond the grey and you're doing really bad shit, don't use us. We're not morality police and we're not here to enforce the world's laws (nor are we legally obligated to do so - we're not cops and have no desire to be such), but we're also not running this network so you can sell CP or plan to kill people (or other beings). Protip: use Tor. Actually, just don't do either of those things, and the world will be a better place. Again, our $0.02. In conclusion, a valid network access token gains you access to cryptostorm. As a result of our token-based authentication model, there's structurally no way we can "shut off" an individual customer (even if we wanted to, which we don't). As a packet-routing service, we're in the business of (securely) routing authenticated packets - not in "managing customers".
Irrespective of that, we receive hundreds of DMCA letters a week - and respond to them individually with a (mostly) polite explanation of our operational model, cryptographic framerwork, and member-agnostic authentication topology. Most of these letters come from spambots run by shady copytrolls: these spam operations are illegal in numerous global jurisdictions, although of course LEO doesn't prosecute them since they often have strong political connections (rule of law, eh?). We've been explaining the reality of things to spambot copytrolls for more than half a decade, but the "demand letters" for us to "takedown" content we neither host nor control keep on comin'... lol. No matter; our network members have never had to deal with a single one of these DMCA harassment letters... and they never will.