NordVPN vs Surfshark

NordVPN genuinely doesn't log your VPN activity — that part of the privacy pitch holds up — but outside the tunnel it runs a large advertising and analytics infrastructure full of US-based trackers, shares data within a broad corporate group, markets to you for a year after you cancel, and retains billing records for a decade.

Surfshark is notably transparent — it publishes specific data retention windows for every processing activity, a warrant canary, and a transparency report — but it temporarily stores your IP address during VPN sessions (deleted within 15 minutes of disconnection), is incorporated in the Netherlands (Nine Eyes jurisdiction), shares data with Nord Security group companies including US entities, stores data in Google BigQuery, and its Alternative Number feature sends call and SMS content to Telnyx in the United States.