No-logs policy
A provider’s commitment not to record which sites you visit, when you connected, or what address you connected from.
Glossary
Independent audit
An examination of a provider’s systems or policy by an external firm, published with the firm’s name, the date, and the scope.
Why it matters
It is the only external evidence that a privacy claim is more than an assertion, which is why it carries the most weight in our rubric.
What most explanations leave out
An audit is a snapshot taken with the provider’s cooperation, of a system that can change the next day. Scope matters enormously: an audit of a browser extension is not an audit of the no-logs claim, and providers sometimes cite one as though it were the other. Check what was examined, not just that something was.
Related terms
Warrant canary
A regularly updated statement that a provider has not received a secret legal demand, whose disappearance implies that it has.
Referenced from
Terms are defined here because they appear in our scoring rubric or in provider reviews, not to fill a glossary.