Using a VPN in Greece is legal, and Greece does not filter political content. What it does block is specific. The Hellenic Gaming Commission keeps a blacklist of unlicensed gambling sites that internet providers must block, and in December 2025 it said all 11,000 domains it had identified were blocked. The 2011 gambling law made using unlicensed sites an offence for players as well as operators. Pirate sites have been blocked since at least November 2018, when providers were ordered to block 38 domains including The Pirate Bay.
In 2025 Greece began fining the viewers of pirate streams, not just the sites. A law passed in February 2025 lets the authorities fine people who watch pirate streams or IPTV 750 euros, doubled for a repeat, and businesses 5,000 euros; a joint ministerial decision in August 2025 set out how the fines are issued. A copyright committee orders new pirate domains blocked as they appear. A VPN does not change the law: watching a pirate stream through one is still an offence.
Surveillance is the other reason Greeks use VPNs. Under Law 3917/2011 providers must keep communications data for 12 months, and Greece never revised the law after the EU court struck down the directive behind it in 2014. The Predator spyware affair, uncovered by the journalist Thanasis Koukakis in 2022, showed the stakes: Nikos Androulakis, now leader of the main opposition party, was wiretapped by the intelligence service and targeted with Predator. The head of the intelligence service and a senior aide to the prime minister resigned. In July 2024 the Supreme Court prosecutor closed the investigation, finding no wrongdoing by government agencies, and in February 2026 an Athens court convicted four people linked to Intellexa, the company that sold the spyware.
GhostShield has no server in Greece. The nearest locations are Milan, Geneva and Limburg in Germany. They protect your connection and give you an Italian, Swiss or German address; they cannot give you a Greek one, so Greek services that check for a Greek address, such as ERTFLIX, ANT1 and MEGA streams, will not work through them.
International Privacy Standards
Internet freedom varies significantly by country. Organizations like Freedom House track global internet freedom annually, while the EU's GDPR has set new standards for data protection worldwide. Reporters Without Borders monitors press freedom and digital access restrictions globally.
A VPN helps you maintain consistent privacy protections regardless of which country you're browsing from, ensuring your data stays encrypted and your activity stays private.
The privacy landscape in Greece
The state's surveillance powers are real and used. OTE and Cosmote, Deutsche Telekom's Greek companies, reported 7,058 lines intercepted at the authorities' request in 2025, up from 7,026 in 2024, as well as 14,304 traffic data records and 7,962 lookups of who owned an IP address, under the 2022 law on lifting communications secrecy. The Predator affair showed that commercial spyware was used against politicians and journalists.
A VPN hides the sites you visit from your provider and from anyone on the same network. It does not protect a phone that already carries spyware; keep the phone updated and treat unexpected links with suspicion.
Gambling and piracy enforcement is the other side. The gambling blocks are applied by the providers, and the 2025 piracy fines are aimed at the viewer. A VPN changes what your provider can see, not what is legal.
Top reasons people use a VPN in Greece
At home, the main reasons are keeping your browsing out of the provider's 12-month record and protecting logins on the free Wi-Fi in cafes, hotels and on ferries.
Visitors use a VPN on the same networks, and connect to a server in their own country for home banking and streaming catalogues, where GhostShield has one.
Greeks abroad cannot get a Greek address from GhostShield, because there is no server in Greece.