VPN without email: how each sign-in works

"VPN without email" covers three different things, and most pages that use the phrase blur them. One is an app you can open and use with no account at all. Another is a paid plan that your email never touches on the provider's side. The third is the payment step, which can hand your name to someone else even when the VPN never asks for it.

What does "VPN without email" actually cover?

It covers three separate questions: whether you need an account to connect, whether the provider holds an email for a paid plan, and who learns your identity when you pay. A provider can answer yes to the first and no to the third.

On ForestVPN the Free plan needs no account, and an app-store plan used on one device needs no number. A web purchase, or one plan across several devices, is bound to the account number: the app, or the web checkout, creates a 32-character number, shows it once, and that number is the sign-in. There is no email field and no password, and the help page says the same. The design reasons are in Why your sign-in is a number, so this post will not repeat them.

Payment is the part people forget. Apple, Google, a card processor and a crypto processor each know different things about you, and none of them is ForestVPN.

What do other providers' own pages say about sign-up?

Of the seven providers whose own pages we read, Ciphra, Stellar, Bright VPN, hide.me and IVPN describe a way to start with no email, Mullvad describes a one-click account number without mentioning email, and Proton VPN's page for its free plan says only to create an account.

Each cell below is what the linked page says, or "not stated" where it is silent. It is a comparison of sign-up wording only. It says nothing about what any provider does with data after you connect, and none of these rows was tested by creating an account.

Three rows deserve a second look. Ciphra, Stellar and Mullvad describe the same shape as ours, a token or number in place of an email, and Stellar's page tells you to "treat it the way you would treat a recovery code". Proton's row is no criticism. Its page is about the free plan and is simply silent on the point.

Does paying for a VPN reveal who you are?

On ForestVPN the payment step holds more than the sign-in does, and where it sits depends on how you pay. The sign-in holds a number; the payment sits with a store or a processor.

In the app, Apple App Store billing or Google Play billing handles the subscription. On Apple platforms we receive a signed receipt and a device-derived token; on Android we verify the purchase token directly with Google. Either way we never see a card number.

On the web you pick a processor. Stripe and CloudPayments take cards, and Stripe holds the buyer's name, email, billing address and card details, none of which reaches us. We hand the processor a one-time reference we mint ourselves, never the account number. What we keep from that purchase is which processor billed it, the processor's own subscription id, the tier, the date it is paid until and whether it was cancelled or revoked.

The policy puts the trade in two sentences, and we will quote them rather than soften them: "a records request served on us produces a tier and a paid-until date. The same request served on the payment processor produces a person and a card."

Crypto goes through NOWPayments. For a crypto payment ForestVPN receives nothing about you, and we keep the same purchase record as for a card (payments section). NOWPayments holds no card or bank account, and the privacy policy's glossary calls it the payment method where even the processor holds the least about you.

What happens if you lose a VPN account number, cancel or want a refund?

Losing the number is permanent when no device still holds it, because nothing on our side identifies you to recover it against. The lost-number page lists where to look first: on Apple devices the number is kept in iCloud Keychain when iCloud Keychain is turned on, and on Android the app can reveal it, and may ask you to confirm it is you first.

If you paid in the App Store or Google Play, you do not need the number to keep Premium on the device that paid. Restore Purchases covers it.

The web is harder. After a web purchase, support can ask the processor to refund you but cannot restore access, since there is no email or password on our side to show the purchase was yours. A crypto payment cannot be refunded at all. We would rather you read both sentences before paying than after.

Cancelling follows the same split:

• App store: cancel in the store's own settings, Apple ID subscriptions on Apple platforms or the Subscriptions screen in Google Play on Android.
• Card on the web: a Stripe subscription is cancelled in Stripe's customer portal, which knows you by the email it holds; a CloudPayments purchase is a one-time term with nothing to cancel (terms).
• Crypto: nothing to cancel. The payment buys a fixed term and expires.

Deleting the account is a separate act, and it does not cancel anything; the help page says to cancel first.

Is a VPN without email the same as no data at all?

No: ForestVPN holds no name, email or password, but a paid plan still leaves a purchase record on our side and a payment identity with the store or processor that billed it. Even with no account, ForestVPN keeps a device record (a hash of the device's public key, its platform, when it was first seen and the last day it was seen, and the account it is attached to if you attached one) indefinitely, a daily usage row (bytes and connection count per device per day) for 31 days, and a monthly usage row (total bytes and connections per device per month) indefinitely, all listed in the privacy policy. That page also lists what is kept and for how long, including the records that stay and the limits of a deletion request, and the security page states that there is no name, no email and no password on our side.

Weigh the payment path you choose, not the sign-in. If a paid plan on one device is all you need, buying through the app store keeps the identity with Apple or Google and needs no number on that device, though the help page warns that restoring a purchase on a device that has never seen your original account number is not guaranteed to reattach it, so replacing that device is where this path can cost you. If you need one plan on several devices, the number is the price of that, and the web is where its costs show.

Current plans:

How this table was read