Who Owns Your VPN? Why Ownership Matters
Several of the biggest VPN brands are owned by the same handful of parent companies — Kape Technologies alone owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, and Private Internet Access. Shared ownership isn't automatically a red flag, but it can mean shared infrastructure, correlated incident history, and reviews published by outlets with a financial relationship to the parent company. Here's who actually owns what.
Why ownership is worth checking
A VPN's ownership structure doesn't change its encryption, but it can reveal conflicts of interest and shared risk that its marketing won't mention.
IPVanish is owned by Ziff Davis, which also owns PCMag — a widely cited VPN review publication. That doesn't make PCMag's reviews wrong, but it's a relationship worth knowing about when weighing any outlet's VPN rankings, including ours.
- Sibling brands under one parent often share backend infrastructure — an incident at one can implicate others
- A parent company that also owns review or media outlets creates a conflict of interest when that outlet reviews its own VPN
- Conglomerate acquisitions can quietly change a VPN's jurisdiction, policies, or engineering team without a name change
The major VPN conglomerates
A handful of parent companies own multiple VPN brands you've likely seen recommended separately:
- Kape Technologies: owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, and ZenMate
- Gen Digital (formerly NortonLifeLock/Symantec): owns Norton, Avast, LifeLock, and TunnelBear
- Ziff Davis, Inc.: a publicly traded media and internet company that owns PCMag, Mashable, and IPVanish
- Nord Security: owns NordVPN and, since a 2022 merger, Surfshark — though Surfshark keeps separate infrastructure and app teams
Independent, standalone VPNs
Not every VPN belongs to a conglomerate. These operate as standalone companies:
- ProtonVPN — Proton AG, the same Swiss company behind ProtonMail
- Mullvad — Amagicom AB, privately held in Sweden
- IVPN — Privatus Limited
- Windscribe — Windscribe Limited
- Hide.me — eVenture Limited
- Astrill — Astrill Solutions Inc.
- PureVPN — GZ Systems Limited
Does ownership actually affect your privacy?
Less than a genuine, independently audited no-logs policy does — but it still matters at the margins. A conglomerate-owned VPN isn't automatically less private; Kape-owned ExpressVPN has its own independent audit history. The bigger practical value of knowing ownership is spotting conflicts of interest in reviews and understanding that a security incident at one sibling brand may say something about shared infrastructure at another.
Treat ownership as one input, not a verdict. A standalone VPN with no audits is not automatically safer than a conglomerate-owned VPN with three.
Frequently asked questions
Is it bad if a VPN is owned by a big company?
Not automatically. Scale can fund better infrastructure and more frequent audits. The main risks are conflicts of interest in reviews from sibling media brands, and shared infrastructure risk across sibling VPN brands under the same parent.
Does Nord Security owning Surfshark mean they're the same VPN?
No. Surfshark operates its own infrastructure, apps, and engineering team separately from NordVPN, despite the 2022 merger bringing them under the same parent group.
How do I find out who owns a VPN?
Check the company's About page, its terms of service (often lists the legal entity), or a transparency-focused comparison resource. We list ownership for all 14 VPNs we test on our Trust Center.