No-logging of user activity policy


Last updated: 22 March 2021

We do not keep activity logs of any kind. Learn more about what this means and why we choose to operate this way.

What this policy covers

All of our policies regarding data and its storage

Policy overview

The underlying policy of Mullvad is that we never store any activity logs of any kind. We strongly believe in having a minimal data retention policy because we want you to remain anonymous.


Our anonymous, numbered accounts




Question: How many numbered accounts does Mullvad have?

Data that we store for an account¹

account number | expiry date
xxxxxxxxxxx    | 20170730

Data stored for WireGuard@ configuration (if used)

account number | pubkey    | tunnel address
xxxxxxxxxxxx   | xxxxxxxx  | x

Data stored for port-forward configuration (if used)

account number | port | wg_peer
xxxxxxxxxxxx   | x    | x

How Mullvad handles payment information

You can pay money to the numbered account and therefore acquire more VPN time. Mullvad accepts cash, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, bank wire, credit card, PayPal, and Swish. You can find more information on how we handle each type of payment below.

Some types of payment mean that personal data will be processed (such as e.g. bank account number and PayPal-ID). If you choose a payment method where you are providing your personal data to Mullvad, such as PayPal, we will process and protect your information according to the GDPR and other applicable legislations. For more information please read our Privacy policy.


Put the money in an envelope together with the payment token and send it to us. We will open the envelope, add time to the account (corresponding to the amount of cash sent), and then use a shredder to destroy the envelope and its non-money contents.

We have no way of knowing who made the payment and who the account belongs to. Even if a person were to address the envelope, there is still no way to prove that he or she generated the account or is even using it. Please avoid writing your name or address on the envelope.

The GDPR does not apply in this case since the personal data on the envelope does not form a part of a filing system and are not intended to form part of a filing system.


payment | account number | amount | currency | timestamp

Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash


We store these payment details for bitcoin and bitcoin cash¹:


Credit card, PayPal, Swish, and bank wire


As a customer of their services, these entities would allow us to request this information if we chose to do so. In short, your payment actions with these two methods are not anonymous and the GDPR and other relevant data protection regulations may apply if you are making a payment by credit card, PayPal, Swish or by bank wire.

The data must be kept for the statutory retention period described in  applicable local laws such as the Swedish Accounting Act (some information must be stored for seven years from the end of the fiscal year). If not required by law, the data will be stored for no longer than necessary for the purpose. After the periods, the data will be permanently deleted.

Here's the information we store for bank wires¹:

xxxxxx  | xxxxxxxxxxxx   | 30     | EUR      | 2016-12-09 00:01:06 | xxxxxxxxx

*transaction_id is deleted 40 days after payment


payment | account number | amount | currency | timestamp*          | stripe_charge_id*

*stripe_charge_id and the time part (hh:mm:ss) of timestamp is deleted 40 days after payment

Here's the information we store for Swish¹:

payment | account number | amount | currency | timestamp           | swish_request_id

*swish_request_id and the time part (hh:mm:ss) of timestamp is deleted 40 days after payment  

Here's the information we store for PayPal transactions¹:

payment | account number | amount | currency | timestamp*          | transaction_id* 

*transaction_id and the time part (hh:mm:ss) of timestamp are deleted 40 days after payment

Question: Why do you store transaction_id and payment tokens?

It's important to note that payment processors like PayPal and Stripe do not have your Mullvad account number. We send them a token* to link the payment to your account. If, however, you send a bank wire payment, the account number will exist in the "message" field of the transaction.

You should also use a token* when sending us cash. Do not write down the account number.

Activation codes

Here's the information we store for activation codes¹:

payment | account number | amount | timestamp           | voucher id | activation code

in-app purchases on iOS

Here's the information we store for iOS purchases:

payment | account number | amount | timestamp           | product id | transaction id

Partner accounts

For accounts created by partners, we don't store payment information.
Instead we store information on when time was added to or refunded from an account:

event id | time added/removed | account number | timestamp          
xxxxxx   | 1234               | xxxxxxxxxxxx   | 2016-12-09 00:01:06


A token is created for all payment methods except cryptocurrencies and bank wire. The token, instead of your account number, is sent to the payment processor and used as a reference to link a payment to your account.

This token expires after 40 days and is no longer possible to link to your account. Cash tokens that haven’t been accounted for, however, are stored for 120 days in case postal service is slow.

What we don't log


  • no logging of traffic
  • no logging of DNS requests
  • no logging of IP addresses
  • no logging of user bandwidth

Our OpenVPN server log configuration:

verb 0
log-append /dev/null


Providing a reliable service

We want to ensure that everyone using our VPN experiences a reliable and stable service. Through the years we have implemented changes to ensure that even if our API fails we can still continue to provide a VPN that can be relied upon.

This was a way of resolving MUL-03-002 WP2 from our Infrastructure Audit in 2020.

For our OpenVPN relays we have implemented Fail2ban to block non-authorized or malicious attempts at gaining account time.

Fail2ban works by reading from a frequently wiped list of malicious unauthorized IP addresses in RAM (tmpfs). Regular paying customers and successful connections are not included in this, it is only to prevent any bruteforce attempts.

Question: Does that mean if I try to authenticate to an OpenVPN server I will have my IP address logged?

Answer: No. We do not log customers that have a valid account token. This blocking is limited to bad actors trying to gain free account time with non-existent, invalid account numbers.

Other data that we do handle

Our servers send two types of data to our monitoring system:

  • aggregated application data, such as total number of current vpn connections
  • generic system metrics, such as CPU load per core and total bandwidth used by the server.




  • We store Nginx access logs for up to 5 minutes in the following format (which does not contain IPs): $server_name [$time_local] $request $status
  • Information older than 5 minutes is deleted, and only aggregated information about the number of requests and their response codes is saved.
  • Our website utilizes a minimum amount of cookies. Please read our cookie policy for more information.

How we handle emails and problem reports

Our support staff answers questions, resolves problems, and gives general support to customers who actively send an email to or submit a problem report via our app/client.


  5. No private information  not even your email address  will ever actively be passed to third parties (except the third party which operates our email service on behalf of us), unless you explicitly ask us to.
  6. Please note that an e-mail address is generally considered as personal data and even the information in the e-mail message may include personal data.

Port-forwarding (2021-03-22)

Port-forwarding is no longer allowed on an account that has an active subscription.  It is therefore not possible to:

  1. Adding forwarding ports to accounts that has a subscription
  2. Add a subscription to an account that has forwarded ports


