Nord VPN is keeping local logs, how to automate log purging?
I have found that Nord VPN is keeping detailed logs on its user's computers.
It stores them in: C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\NordVPN\logs
I spoke with Nord support and they told me their is no way to stop them from being created. I am not a good programmer, does anyone know of a way to automatically purge/delete the log files?
An auto purging application could also help me clear out the logs of some other pesky programs as well.
Thank you in advance!
41 Answer
No need for an application: a simple script can handle this.
If the drive is encrypted, using the native del /q would do. If the drive is not encrypted, you'd need to overwrite the files: I recommend Sysinternals SDelete as it's a command line tool you can use as a replacement in the same script. Keep in mind that SDelete might not work on SSD drives.
This deleteNordVPNlogs.cmd script will loop through the Nord VPN log files and remove every log file except for today's log which may still be in use and possibly cause Nord VPN to crash. You can run this manually or e.g. through the Task Scheduler. Depending on your regional settings you may need to correct the offsets for extracting the year, month and day from %DATE%. Choose between del and sdelete etc.
:: A .cmd script for removing Nord VPN logs.
::
@echo off
:: Change the offsets (~10, ~4, ~7) depending on your regional settings!
:: You can find the correct positions from 'echo %DATE%'
set year=%date:~10,4%
set month=%date:~4,2%
set day=%date:~7,2%
set logdirpath=%LocalAppData%\NordVPN\logs\
:: Deleting the active log file might cause problems.
set "todayslog=%logdirpath%app-%year%-%month%-%day%.nwl"
echo Removing all Nord VPN log files except %todayslog% ...
:: Loop through the log files
for /r %logdirpath% %%i in ( "app-*.nwl" ) do ( if not %%i==%todayslog% ( echo I just copypasted this instead of modifying the script. REM Choose one: REM del /q "%%i" REM "C:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite\sdelete.exe" -p 7 -r "%%i" )
)This can be modified for any other logs by altering the logdirpath and log file naming pattern.
