Greece

11,312 State Wiretaps in a Single Year

Greece's data protection authority has documented a sharp resurgence in state surveillance. The Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy reported 11,312 total state wiretaps in 2024–2025, up 12% from the previous year, with 8,262 of those justified under vague "national security" claims — a category that saw the Counter-Terrorism Service alone conduct 5,402 wiretaps, up from 3,796 the year before. The authority explicitly warned that the temporary decline in surveillance following Greece's spyware scandal has now reversed, with wiretapping activity climbing again.

"Predatorgate" Became Known as Greece's Watergate

Greece's defining privacy scandal began when a journalist discovered his own phone had been compromised. The affair broke in early 2022 when investigative journalist Thanasis Koukakis discovered he had been wiretapped by Greece's intelligence service and that his phone had also been infected with Predator spyware — technology capable of accessing a device's messages, camera, and microphone remotely. Months later, the leader of Greece's opposition party discovered he too had been targeted with Predator while serving as a Member of the European Parliament, escalating the case into a national scandal.

A Court Confirmed 87 People Were Targeted — Including Ministers and Military Officials

The scale of who was actually monitored has now been formally established in court. A February 2026 court ruling found that Intellexa's Predator software was used to surveil verified victims across Greek civil society, politics, and the military — 87 people in total, including government ministers and senior military officials. Four individuals connected to the companies that marketed the spyware were convicted and sentenced to over 126 years each, though under Greek misdemeanor law only eight years will actually be served.

No Government Official Has Ever Been Charged

Despite the scale of surveillance confirmed in court, accountability has stopped short of the state itself. One in three of the people targeted by Predator had also been under separate legal surveillance by Greece's own intelligence service, EYP — yet Greece's Supreme Court concluded in 2024 that no state ministry or agency had used illegal spyware, and no government officials have been charged or called as witnesses to date. Critics, including the former head of Greece's own communications privacy watchdog, have described facing significant institutional resistance while investigating the case.

What Users in Greece Should Do Right Now

A VPN encrypts your internet traffic and masks your real IP address, adding a meaningful layer of protection against everyday tracking and data harvesting — though it's important to understand its limits: a VPN protects your network traffic, not a device that's already been compromised by spyware like Predator, which typically infects a phone directly rather than intercepting traffic in transit. Choose a VPN with a verified no-logs policy and strong encryption as a baseline privacy measure, keep your device's operating system fully updated since spyware has historically relied on exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities, and avoid clicking links from unfamiliar sources. If you're a journalist, activist, or public figure facing elevated personal risk, general advice has real limits — organizations like Citizen Lab and Access Now's Digital Security Helpline can check your specific device for signs of compromise and offer guidance tailored to genuinely high-risk circumstances.

VPNs Are Completely Legal in Greece

Using a VPN in Greece is completely legal. Greece, as an EU member state, falls under GDPR — the strictest data protection regulation in the world. There's no grey area for ordinary use here — Greek and EU-wide law both treat a VPN as a standard privacy and security tool.

One Detail Worth Knowing About Greek ISPs

Even though GDPR requires Greek ISPs like Cosmote, Vodafone, and Nova to respect your data at a baseline level, the European Data Retention Directive — despite being struck down by the European Court of Justice — continues to be applied in some form across many EU member states, allowing providers to store connection metadata for a set period. In practice, this means your ISP can legally know which websites you visit, when you connect, and how much data you exchange unless you're actively encrypting that traffic yourself.

What to Look For in a UCN VPN for Greece

Greece's data retention rules are set out in Law 3917/2011, governing data produced or processed through publicly available electronic communication services, with Law 5160/2024 adding further cybersecurity obligations for essential and important entities, including encryption requirements where applicable. A UCN VPN with WireGuard® encryption routes your traffic outside that retention framework entirely. Make sure your provider supports WireGuard, has a kill switch, and isn't based in a jurisdiction with mandatory data retention — DNS leak protection matters too, especially if you use split tunneling.

Why People in Greece Actually Use a VPN

Day-to-day use in Greece is straightforward, since there's minimal censorship to work around. A UCN VPN is genuinely useful for securing banking sessions on public Wi-Fi in Athens or Thessaloniki, and for accessing international streaming libraries and services unavailable to Greek IP addresses — especially handy for Greeks travelling abroad who want to keep accessing local platforms as they would at home.

What "No-Logs" Actually Means

A no-logs policy means the VPN provider stores no record of your browsing activity, IP address, or connection times — so there's nothing to hand over, regardless of what Greek ISPs themselves are required to retain. A VPN is no longer a "nice to have" in 2026 — it's essential digital hygiene, as important as antivirus software or a password manager. Choose a provider with an independently audited no-logs policy for the strongest, most verifiable protection.

Greece's ISPs can see more of your browsing than most people realize — a UCN VPN with WireGuard® encryption closes that gap entirely.