Does Kaspersky VPN Keep Logs in 2026? Claims, Partners and the Outage

Kaspersky says its VPN doesn’t log what you do online. That’s the claim. What’s missing is proof: there is no independent no-logs audit of Kaspersky VPN Secure Connection that we know of, its servers are run together with a partner company, and the parent firm has been banned from selling software in the US since 2024.

Then, in October 2026, the VPN went down worldwide for most of four days. Here’s what we know about its logging, and whether we’d use it.

Short answer

Kaspersky VPN probably doesn’t keep detailed browsing logs, based on what the company has said. But “probably” is all you get. Without an independent audit, you’re taking the word of a Russia-headquartered company and an infrastructure partner you didn’t choose. For a VPN, whose whole job is to be trusted with your traffic, we don’t think that’s good enough when audited options cost about the same.

What Kaspersky says about logs

Kaspersky’s main public answer on VPN logging came on its own support forum. In October 2021, a Kaspersky employee answered a user’s question about logs and Swiss law with these points:

• Kaspersky provides the VPN servers “together with its trusted partner, the Pango software company”
• Kaspersky and Pango do not log users’ online activity
• IP addresses are not stored after a VPN session closes
• The cooperation with Pango is governed by a data protection agreement
• At that time, Kaspersky said it had received no requests from law enforcement or government agencies about Kaspersky VPN

Forum moderators in the same thread added that logs can be collected when a user asks technical support for help, with the user’s consent.

That’s a reasonably clear statement. It’s also five years old, posted on a forum rather than in a formal audit report, and it can’t be checked from the outside.

What Kaspersky does collect

Like every VPN, Kaspersky needs some data to run the service. A review by Security.org (since archived) listed what it says Kaspersky kept: technical data for crash analysis and VPN connection, an installation ID stored for a month, a token deleted after 24 hours, login events stored for a month, an encrypted user and device ID, and VPN session statistics. The same review also lists IP address and browser type among logged data in one table, and says the opposite elsewhere, so we’d treat its details with caution.

None of that is browsing history. But login events and session statistics kept for a month are more than a strict no-logs provider like Mullvad keeps.

Has Kaspersky VPN been audited?

Not for logging. AV-TEST ran a test of Kaspersky VPN Secure Connection in November 2024, commissioned by Kaspersky. It covered speed, latency, torrenting, streaming and leak protection, and the results were positive. But it wasn’t a no-logs audit. The page states that “a no-logging approach is used”, which is Kaspersky’s claim, not something AV-TEST verified on the servers.

Compare that with the providers at the top of our database:

Kaspersky VPN isn’t one of the 49 VPNs we score. If it were, the lack of an audit alone would put it at 2/5 or lower on that criterion, under our rules. Our guide on how to verify a VPN’s no-logs claims explains why an audit matters and what a good one covers.

The Pango question

The detail most Kaspersky VPN users don’t know is that the servers aren’t Kaspersky’s alone. Pango is the company behind Hotspot Shield, and Hotspot Shield scores 0/5 on audited no-logs in our database. We cover that history in does Hotspot Shield keep logs?

That doesn’t prove anything bad about Kaspersky’s setup. It does mean your traffic passes through infrastructure run with a third party, under a contract you can’t read. Ownership and partners are one of the first things we check on any VPN, for exactly this reason. See who owns your VPN for how tangled the industry gets.

The US ban and the Russia question

On 20 June 2024, the US Commerce Department barred Kaspersky from selling its products in the US or to US persons. Kaspersky could keep providing certain updates until 29 September 2024. Users weren’t penalised for keeping the software, but the government strongly encouraged them to switch.

The US argument was about the Russian government’s ability to compel or influence a company headquartered in Russia. Kaspersky has always rejected that, and has moved some data processing to Switzerland. Whatever you think of the politics, the point for a VPN user is simple: jurisdiction is about which government can make a company hand over data or change its software. For a VPN, that question matters more than for almost any other product.

The October 2026 outage

On Sunday 11 October 2026, users started reporting that Kaspersky VPN wouldn’t connect. Within a day, the reports came from Malaysia, Brazil, Italy, Germany, Japan and Australia. According to TechRadar’s reconstruction of the outage, Kaspersky confirmed on 12 October that its VPN, Password Manager and Safe Kids were temporarily unavailable. The VPN was connecting again by the morning of 14 October.

Kaspersky blamed technical issues without naming a cause, said user data and protection were unaffected, and said it would extend affected subscriptions. The timing overlapped with drone strikes on Yandex data centres in Russia, which set off a wave of speculation. TechRadar was careful to call that a correlation, not a proven cause: Kaspersky hasn’t said any consumer service runs on Yandex Cloud.

An outage isn’t a logging problem. But four days without your VPN, password manager and parental controls at once is a good argument against putting all of them with one vendor.

Want to compare all VPNs side by side? Check our full VPN comparison table with scores across 18 criteria.

Is Kaspersky VPN safe to use?

It’s not malware, and its leak protection tested well in AV-TEST’s commissioned test. If you already have it bundled with a Kaspersky security suite and you only use it for café Wi-Fi, the risk is limited.

But we wouldn’t choose it as a privacy tool, for three reasons:

1. No independent no-logs audit. The logging claim rests on company statements.
2. Third-party infrastructure. Servers are run with Pango, which you didn’t pick.
3. Jurisdiction. A Russia-headquartered parent company, banned in the US over exactly the kind of risk a VPN is supposed to remove.

If you want a security bundle, our guide to VPN, antivirus and password manager bundles compares options from audited VPN providers. And if you’re wondering whether you need both an antivirus and a VPN at all, see VPN vs antivirus.

Better alternatives to Kaspersky VPN

Proton VPN is the closest match if you liked the idea of Swiss data protection. Proton is actually based in Switzerland (5/5 on jurisdiction), its no-logs policy is audited by KPMG (5/5), and it runs RAM-only servers. It costs $47.88 for the first year (about $3.99 a month), and the free plan has no data cap.

Switch to Proton VPN

NordVPN is our top pick overall, 4.63/5, with a PwC-audited no-logs policy, RAM-only servers and its own Threat Protection feature that blocks malicious sites and ads. The 1-year plan is $68.85 (about $5.74 a month), with a 60-day refund window.

For a wider shortlist, see our best VPNs with audited no-logs policies. And if you’re cleaning up your security tools, our look at whether Urban VPN is safe shows how badly things can go with a VPN you haven’t vetted.