Surfshark to shut down servers in India over govt's new CERT-In rules

Surfshark said that its servers in India will be shut down before June 27, when CERT-In's new rules will come in effect

Days after ExpressVPN announced that it is shutting down its operations in India over the new cybersecurity-related rules, another popular virtual private network (VPN) service provider Surfshark followed suit.

Surfshark said that its servers will be shut down in India before June 27, when CERT-In's new rules will come into effect. In a tweet, Surfshark said, "We value people’s privacy – that’s why we stand against India’s new data regulation law. We’ll shut down our physical Indian servers."

The new virtual servers for India will be located in Singapore and London, the company said in a statement. Surfshark said that Indian users will not notice any difference in their services after the removal of Indian servers, adding, "They will still be able to connect to whichever server outside the country they please."

“Surfshark proudly operates under a strict 'no logs' policy, so such new requirements go against the core ethos of the company," the firm's legal head Gytis Malinauskas said, defending their move. 

"The infrastructure that Surfshark runs on has been configured in a way that respects the privacy of our users, and we will not compromise our values – or our technical base," he added. 

The new rules issued by Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) in late April said that service providers will have to store the names, IP addresses of its users, along with usage patterns and other data.

The government's new rules have met with widespread criticism from most major VPN firms. 

MoS IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar had earlier said, reacting to the criticism over the new directions, that if virtual service providers don't want to follow the new directions, they are "free to leave India." He had added that the new rules would have no impact on business viability in India.