1. Data Collection: Privacy-First Approach

We believe privacy is a fundamental right. Accordingly, we collect only the minimum amount of data necessary to maintain and improve the basic functionality of our service, and nothing more. This section details what data we collect (limited, non-identifiable metadata) and what data we do not collect (anything that could personally identify you or reveal your online activity).

1.1 Data We Do Collect (Minimal Metadata)

We maintain a minimal logging policy designed to ensure smooth operation and prevent abuse while respecting your privacy. The only data points we log are a few anonymized connection metrics that do not personally identify users:

Bandwidth Usage: The total amount of data transferred through the proxy during your session (in bytes). We log this to monitor server load and ensure fair usage and performance balance across our network.

Connection Timestamps: The start and end time of your proxy connection. This helps us identify overall capacity needs and peak usage periods. Importantly, these timestamps are not tied to any personal identifiers or browsing content and serve purely technical purposes.

Server Performance Metrics: General operational metrics such as server CPU or memory load and overall bandwidth throughput at a given time. These help us optimize our infrastructure in real-time and improve your browsing speed and reliability. All such metrics are aggregated and not linked to individual users.

Abuse Indicators: Our system may automatically tag or flag certain connections for review if they trigger our abuse prevention filters – for example, attempts to access disallowed websites or perform clearly malicious activities. These flags provide summary data (e.g., "in the last 1 hour, this account attempted 115 connections that triggered an abuse filter related to email spam") with no detailed log of the full URL or content of the request. We use them to detect and block abusive behavior (like spamming or DDoS attempts) in order to protect our network and other users. Even in these cases, we do not record any specific browsing content; we only note that the account and a connection triggered certain abuse rules.

Important: The metadata above is anonymized and stripped of any directly identifying information. We do not record your original source IP address, request URLs, or any payload data in these logs. In other words, while we might know that "this user consumed 500MB of data between 2:00–3:00 PM" or that "a connection attempted to triggering abuse filter #15 at 4:15 PM," our systems are designed so that we cannot definitely link any specific online activity performed back to you. The limited data we collect is used solely for technical purposes – ensuring quality of service, balancing network resources, and preventing abuse – and never for tracking individual users.

1.2 Data We Do Not Collect (No Content Logging!)

What we don't collect is just as crucial as what we do. SquidProxies.com adheres to a strict "no content logging" policy. We want to be crystal clear on what information is never recorded or stored when you use our proxies:

No Original IP Addresses: We do not record or store your originating IP address used when you connect to our service. Strictly for network monitor, we only temporarily log a cryptographically hashed version of your original IP for the network management purposes discussed above.

No Browsing Activity or URLs: We do not monitor, inspect, or log the URLs you request or access through our proxy network. The content of your web traffic – whether it's the pages you view, files you download, or searches you perform – is never recorded on our servers. When it comes to content, our proxies act as a blind relay: aside from the minimal metadata noted above, it does not keep any record of where you went or what you did online.

No Traffic Content or Payloads: We do not capture or store the content of data packets transmitted through our network. That means we don't log emails, chat messages, personal data, images, videos, or any other content you transfer via our proxy. Even for flagged connections (see Abuse Indicators above), we do not store the actual content or full request/response data – only the minimal indicators needed for abuse detection.

No DNS Query Logging: We do not record DNS lookups or domain name queries that occur during your browsing sessions. Any DNS requests made on your behalf (to resolve domain names for websites you visit) are handled in memory and not written to any persistent log. This prevents anyone from later determining what sites you may have attempted to access by reviewing DNS logs.

No Device or Personal Identifiers: We do not collect any personal user identifiers in traffic logs – no usernames, no account IDs, no MAC addresses, no device fingerprints. Similarly, we do not log your browser type or OS in a way that links to your sessions (we may collect aggregate statistics of browser/OS usage for compatibility testing, but not on a per-user basis).

By not collecting the above information, we ensure that the proxy usage remains truly private and anonymous. Even internal administrators with full access to our systems cannot retrieve your browsing history or identify you from connection logs – because that data simply does not exist on our servers.

2. Purpose of Data Collection

The limited, anonymized data we do collect serves a few essential purposes, all of which are focused on providing and improving the service for our users – never for advertising or profiling:

Service Performance and Optimization: We use connection metadata like bandwidth totals and session durations to gauge network usage patterns and server performance. This helps us balance load across our servers, plan capacity upgrades, and ensure every user gets fast and reliable proxy speeds. For example, knowing the total data throughput per server or peak times (without any user-specific details) allows us to prevent overloads and improve your browsing experience.

Security and Abuse Prevention: Aggregated data and automated flags help us detect unusual patterns that could indicate abuse — such as DDoS attacks, port scanning, or spamming through the proxy. By monitoring network-level trends (not individual user activity), we can proactively safeguard the service.

Strictly Limited Use: We do not use any collected data for marketing, user profiling, or any non-essential purpose. It is used internally by our technical team only for network administration, performance tuning, and security. We never analyze or correlate this data to track what an individual is doing online – in fact, by design we couldn't do so even if we wanted to, given the anonymization in place. Our approach mirrors the industry's best privacy standards, where only operational metrics are collected, and personal activity remains private.

3. Data Retention: Ephemeral & Anonymous Logs

We have designed our logging system to be ephemeral – meaning we retain data only for the shortest duration necessary to fulfill the above operational needs, and then it is automatically deleted. We do not keep historical archives of any activity on our network. Our data retention practices are as follows:

Short-Term Retention (Typically ≤24 Hours): Connection metadata and any security flags are stored for a very brief period – generally no more than 24 hours – after which they are automatically purged from our systems. In many cases, routine logs roll over and delete even sooner (often within hours) once we've extracted aggregate stats. We keep logs this long purely to allow for immediate troubleshooting and real-time network health monitoring. After this window, the data is permanently erased.

Automatic Log Deletion: The deletion process is automated and continuous. Our servers automatically overwrite or expunge log records as they age out of the short retention period. This ensures that data does not linger on our systems. We regularly audit our log rotation and deletion scripts to verify that old data is indeed being wiped correctly.

No Long-Term Archives: We do not build any long-term archives or backups of traffic logs. Once the retention period passes and data is deleted, it's gone for good. We never profile long-term usage of individual users or keep a history of past connections. This "no history" approach means even in the future we cannot retroactively look up or reconstruct any user's browsing activity.

Anonymization: During the brief time that logs exist, they remain anonymized (as described in Section 1). For example, a log entry might show a session ID or server ID plus some metrics, but it will not contain your IP or any personal info. If any piece of data could potentially identify a user, we either do not log it at all or we irreversibly anonymize/truncate it.

In summary, our retention policy is geared towards maximizing your privacy. By keeping only transient, non-identifiable logs, we minimize the risk that data could be leaked or misused. Even in the unlikely event of a security breach, there would be little to nothing of value in our logs due to their minimal scope and short lifespan.

4. Data Sharing and Disclosure: No Third-Party Access

We follow a strict no-sharing policy when it comes to user data. The limited metadata we collect (as described above) is treated as highly confidential and is never shared with or sold to third parties under any circumstances:

No Selling or Renting Data: We do not and will not ever sell, rent, or trade any user information or traffic data to advertisers, data brokers, or other outside companies. Your usage data is not a commodity to us – it's your private information, and we guard it accordingly. This holds true even for anonymized or aggregate data; we simply don't provide any form of user activity data to outside parties for marketing or any other purpose.

No Third-Party Analytics of Traffic: We do not use external analytics platforms that would require sending them your traffic details. Any analysis of network performance is done in-house by our own team. We avoid any arrangement that might expose user data to third-party service providers. (In cases where we do engage third-party services for things like website analytics or error tracking, those are confined to our website/app and don't involve proxy traffic content. Such providers also must adhere to strict confidentiality and data handling agreements.)

Law Enforcement and Legal Requests: In the rare event that we receive a lawful request from authorities (e.g., a subpoena or court order) to produce user activity information, our policy is to comply with the law while fiercely protecting user privacy. We require proper legal process (for example, a court order from a competent jurisdiction) before considering release of any data, and our team will carefully verify its authenticity and scope. We also challenge any overreaching, vague, or unlawful requests.

Because we do not keep any personally identifying traffic logs or browsing content, our ability to provide meaningful data in response to such requests is extremely limited — in most cases, we simply have nothing useful to disclose. We cannot hand over information we don't have. At most, we might confirm whether our service was operational at a certain time or provide high-level network statistics. If a request seeks data we do not possess (such as a list of websites visited by a user), we will formally state we have no records. If a valid request does target information we have (which is rare, given our minimal data), we will only comply to the narrowest extent required and will inform the affected user whenever we are not legally barred from doing so.

Aside from legal obligations, we do not cooperate with any government or authority to snoop on users. We have never built nor allowed any "backdoor" access to our systems, and we do not participate in any intelligence sharing programs.

In summary, we will use every legal mechanism available to protect your data. And because of our minimal logging, we have very little data to protect in the first place — a fact that in itself is one of the strongest safeguards for your privacy. We want you to feel safe using our service, knowing that we have your back against any prying eyes.

Please see our Privacy Transparency Report for a historical record of legal requests for user information and our responses.

Internal Access Controls: Internally, access to even the minimal data we have is highly restricted. Only authorized engineering personnel who need to maintain the network can view operational logs, and even they can only access recent data before it's deleted. We have robust administrative access controls and monitoring in place to prevent any misuse of data by employees. All staff are trained on privacy procedures and understand that even an attempt to access or share user-related data without authorization would result in termination and possible legal action.

In essence, your proxy usage data stays with SquidProxies.com and no one else.

5. User Anonymity Protections by Design

Ensuring user anonymity isn't just a promise — it's built into the very architecture of our service. We employ multiple layers of protection to guarantee that using our proxies truly shields your identity and activity.

Our design principles include IP masking, encrypted transport, and strict separation of operational metadata from content data. As described in Sections 1 and 2, we do not log your browsing activity, URLs, payload content, or original IP addresses.

We operate on a true "zero-knowledge" principle: we do not perform deep-packet inspection, do not store encryption keys or content data, and cannot reconstruct your sessions. This ensures that even if someone were to ask us, "What did User X do at time Y?", we would have no data to provide beyond minimal, anonymized operational metrics.

These measures ensure your anonymity is protected at every step. From the moment you initiate a connection to the moment your traffic exits our network, our infrastructure shields your identity and keeps your activities private. We continually review and update our anonymization techniques to address new threats and tracking methods, so you can use our proxies with confidence that your privacy is upheld by default.

6. Updates to This Policy

From time to time, we may update this Network Privacy Policy to reflect changes in practices, advancements in technology, or legal requirements. Our core commitment — minimizing data collection and maximizing user privacy — will never change.

If we make material changes, we will notify users via email and/or prominent announcements on our website or dashboard. We encourage periodic review of this policy to stay informed. Continued use of our service after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.