Servers in country
Providers with exit locations in Guinea: a server here gives you an address in the country. The register’s table records no mandate for VPN operators here; the briefing below sets out what the law asks of providers.
Only a few providers publish an exit here.
Providers with exit locations in a country — a fact about a network, kept deliberately apart from where the company is registered. Only providers whose country list has a source appear: a provider that publishes nothing simply does not show up, which is a criterion already in the data rather than an editorial one.
Guinea’s 2016 cybersecurity and data protection law sets fixed retention terms for online providers: three to five years for data identifying whoever contributed content, and at least five years for subscriber data. It also gives the authorities powers to order access suspended and to require real-time collection of traffic and content data.
Law L/2016/037/AN on cybersecurity and personal data protection requires persons who give access to online communication services, or store content for the public, to keep for three to five years, depending on the importance of the data, the data that can identify anyone who contributed to a content of their services; the data protection rules prevail where the two conflict.
Operators of computer systems and electronic communications providers must keep subscriber data intact for at least five years; where an author cannot be found because it was not kept, the fine is 150,000,000 to 700,000,000 Guinean francs. The competent authority may require any person to hand over specified stored data, and operators or providers specified traffic and subscriber data (article 101).
It may also order preservation of data at risk of loss or alteration, and real-time collection of traffic or content data with the provider’s assistance. Refusing a lawful requisition is an offence carrying six months to two years and a fine of 15,000,000 to 100,000,000 francs; for a legal person the fine is 150,000,000 to 800,000,000 (article 105). Whether a VPN operator is a provider within these provisions is not established.
A provider offering online communication services must make available technical means to restrict access to certain services and inform users that they exist; failing that carries a fine of 20,000,000 to 100,000,000 francs, and the owners or managers face six months to three years’ imprisonment (articles 70 and 71). On the competent authority’s decision, a provider giving access to communication services or hosting content must suspend access to those services or content immediately.
Cyber café use requires prior identification of users (article 67). Article 57 punishes, with one to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of 150,000,000 to 600,000,000 francs, anyone who breaches a prohibition on practising as a cryptology provider or an obligation to withdraw cryptology means.
Article 29 punishes insult, outrageous expression or invective containing no imputation of fact, made through a computer system, with six months to a year and a fine of 40,000,000 to 120,000,000 francs, rising to three to eight years where it targets a person for race, colour, descent, religion, origin, nationality or ethnicity. Threats of violence or death by computer carry one to five years, and three to eight where made on those grounds.
Creating or spreading racist or xenophobic material by computer carries five to ten years, as does denying, approving or justifying genocide or crimes against humanity. Producing or spreading data likely to disturb public order or security or harm human dignity is also an offence (article 31). An author is found through the retained data above.
Sworn agents of the information systems security centre, or judicial police officers acting on the prosecutor’s requisition or a warrant and the competent judicial authority’s decision, may search systems, seize equipment and data and seal premises, but not in breach of the criminal procedure code, except in imminent peril or grave harm to the health, security or functioning of the State.
Separately, the Act lets sworn agents carry out unannounced checks, searches, seizures and arrests in cyberspace to defend the nation’s fundamental interests or citizens’ security, and states that they remain criminally and civilly liable for abuses. The order of the rows is the security score, and a server’s location is not a recommendation.
Guinea
Only a provider that publishes a country list appears here at all — 41 of the 77 on file. The other 27 are not missing research: they publish no list, and U02_server_countries is unknown for them rather than filled from the number their marketing claims.
A provider that says “100+ countries” and enumerates none gets no page on any of them, and the count printed on its own record is the length of the list, never the claim. With 41 providers behind 180 countries, the long tail of these pages carries one or two rows.
More countries
Coverage147countries
Paying monthly$9.99monthly
Paying yearly$53.88yearly total
Free tierYeslimited free plan
Devices10at once
Security
Usability
Coverage168countries
Paying monthly$11.99monthly
Paying yearly$47.84yearly total
Free tierYeslimited free plan
Devices5at once
Security
Usability
