Slightly off-topic but I am delighted by the generally non-abrasive way this thread is going. Dialogue is good!
I realized another way that would work for you guys (but is out of your hands) is fighting a court case about this. You'd be legally compelled to tell the truth and very screwed if you deny but then it comes out there is logging or mining going on. It's not ironclad but it is how most VPNs end up being considered 'solid'.
We have indeed retained lawyers to look into our options to fight the online defamation, but its hard to take anonymous accusers to court. However, as we have discussed here (https://protonvpn.com/blog/is-protonvpn-trustworthy/) there is already a lot of ironclad legal evidence.
First, were we to lie in our privacy policy, we would be subject to GDPR fines of up to 20 million Euros, since we have both European customers, and a presence in the EU.
Second, there has already been a court case. We were ordered by a Swiss court to hand over logs, and we stated truthfully (under penalty of perjury) that we did not have the logs requested. This case was previously disclosed here: https://protonvpn.com/blog/transparency-report/
'January 2019 – A data request from a foreign country was approved by the Swiss court system. However, as we do not have any customer IP information, we could not provide the requested information and this was explained to the requesting party.'
I'm not terribly well-versed in the international (or Swiss) legal system but are portions of that request public record, or would it be possible to put portions of it online, verbatim?
It would really strengthen the case to your customers because whilst claiming you had a request when you didn't isn't illegal, falsifying court documents definitely is.
No public indictment was issued because in this case the accused could not be charged since they couldn't be identified. Generally there are only documents if police decide to move forward with a prosecution, which is unlikely since we do not have logs that can identify users.
I realized another way that would work for you guys (but is out of your hands) is fighting a court case about this. You'd be legally compelled to tell the truth and very screwed if you deny but then it comes out there is logging or mining going on. It's not ironclad but it is how most VPNs end up being considered 'solid'.