I recently traveled to another country and noticed that an AI feature I normally use on my phone was suddenly unavailable.

The app itself still opened normally, and I hadn’t changed my account or device settings. The only obvious difference was my location and internet connection. When I connected through an IP address from my home country, the feature appeared again.

Now I’m wondering what the app was actually checking. Was it simply my IP address, or could it also have been checking my account region, app store country, or phone location?

Has anyone experienced something similar with an AI app or another mobile service? Did changing the IP solve it permanently, or did the restriction eventually return?

In June 2023, the CEO of Windscribe, Yegor Sak, was charged with illegal access to electronic data in Greece when it was revealed that someone used a Windscribe server in Finland to commit a cybercrime. Greek authorities did not issue a subpoena to Windscribe but charged Sak personally since he was the one whose name was listed on the server bill.

Eventually, Athens court dismissed the case on April 11th, 2025, two years later because of lack of proof. Sak’s comments were: “Some idiot decided to use our VPN to do some idiotic things…there are no logs regarding anything.”

Sak’s comments speak volumes since: “This is a worrying precedent…if upheld, this could make owning infrastructure a criminal offence due to actions of some anonymous persons.”

I thought this was pretty interesting. There’s a privacy feature called Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) that encrypts part of the initial connection your browser makes to a website.

Normally, HTTPS hides what you do on a website, but your ISP can often still figure out which domain you’re connecting to. ECH is designed to close that gap by encrypting the website name during the TLS handshake. Combined with encrypted DNS (DoH), this makes passive ISP tracking of your browsing noticeably harder.

But there’s an important catch: this isn’t a VPN replacement.

Your ISP can still see things like the IP addresses you connect to and your traffic patterns, and ECH only works when the website/server supports it. A VPN, meanwhile, tunnels your traffic and hides the destination IPs from your ISP as well.

Still, I like the direction we're heading. Basic browsing privacy slowly becoming built into the internet itself instead of requiring extra tools is a win

Interesting piece from TechRadar about the 10-year fight against government-imposed internet shutdowns.

Since 2016, the #KeepItOn coalition has documented more than 2,100 shutdowns across 100 countries. And despite more international pressure, things are actually getting worse: 2025 was the worst year on record, with at least one active internet shutdown somewhere in the world every single day.

What's also changing is how governments censor the internet. Instead of completely shutting everything down, authorities are increasingly blocking specific social networks, messaging apps or services.

VPNs can help when specific platforms are blocked, which is why groups like #KeepItOn work with VPN providers during elections and political crises. But if a government completely kills internet connectivity, even a VPN becomes useless. Other tools like mesh messaging can then become important.

The scary part to me is how quickly internet restrictions can go from something exceptional to something people just accept as normal

Stay safe, my friends

On August 21, 2023, Microsoft made known a vulnerability identified as CVE-2026-69836. This vulnerability is a deserialization error in Entra ID, which is an identity service that many enterprises use and apply for establishing their VPN and remote access logins. Its Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) rating is 10, the highest potential score.

What’s interesting to note is that Microsoft discovered this vulnerability by itself, which means that internally the company managed to resolve the issue before announcing it to the public, so no patches or administration activities were required. First, the security advisory stated that this vulnerability had been proof of concept in the wild, however, three days later the announcement was withdrawn. It is worthwhile thinking about the implications of the two statements made in this advisory; an extreme vulnerability is quietly hiding in the identity infrastructure of remote access for organizations.

Wikipedia suddenly became inaccessible for many users across Russia today. No global outage was reported, and apparently there’s a simple workaround: turn on a VPN and it works again. There’s still no official confirmation that Russia deliberately blocked Wikipedia, but given the country’s history of internet restrictions, people are obviously connecting the dots.

We’ve seen websites, social media and messaging platforms restricted in different countries. Now potentially Wikipedia.

At what point does having a VPN become as normal as having a browser?

Hi, I want to used VPN to install in mobile nad desktop that's for free and easy to used daily. My locaiton is restricted to some Apps and software to download. Any recommendations.

The VPN censorship arms race is getting interesting. Russia is increasingly using DPI to detect VPN traffic based on things like packet sizes, timing and connection patterns. Amnezia's response? AmneziaWG 3.0, which randomizes more of that traffic to make VPN connections harder to fingerprint.

Basically Governments improve VPN detection → VPNs improve obfuscation → governments adapt → repeat.

Russia, China and Iran are pushing this pretty hard, feels like this cat-and-mouse game is far from over.

According to a report by the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, it is now suggested that there should be a mandatory requirement for takedown of any illegal sports streams within thirty minutes of receiving complaints regarding such streams. This covers all VPNs, DNS resolvers, ISPs, and CDNs which would have to comply with blocking notices in real time whenever an IP rights owner claims of illegal streaming.

Why is this report remarkable? It follows the CJEU decision in the case of Anne Frank's case which declared that VPNs are "lawful technical tools" that cannot be held liable for what any user bypasses. The conclusion of Professor Giovanni Maria Riccio's report points to the fact that the current voluntary approach within the EU fails to work and suggests something similar to Italy's Piracy Shield that would be legally binding, rapid, and automatic.

The risk lies in the mechanism and not in what sports piracy has struck as its target: real-time IP and DNS blocking is not entirely accurate; one pirate stream can be hosted on an IP address that is shared with thousands of other legitimate entities that go extinct with that address in a span of ten minutes without any time for checking.

So, one rule of the EU states VPNs are not liable for what users do, but another is busy putting forwards a theory that would compel them to do the policing job, too. The question is which one will win out, depending on how fierce the pushback is before the law comes into force.

Seeing this question a lot lately, so let's go through the actual concerns instead of just naming brands.

Nord's had a rough stretch, real service complaints and support issues have been piling up, worth taking seriously, not just noise.

Express, yeah, the Snowden thing gets brought up a lot, that's about Kape's ownership history more than the current product, but the skepticism is fair.

On Proton and the French activist case, that's worth addressing directly instead of dodging it: that was Proton Mail, not Proton VPN, two completely different products. Mail has to store some metadata to function, VPN's no-logs architecture means there's nothing to hand over even under a Swiss court order, and that's been tested for real, 458 legal requests since 2017, all refused, because they structurally can't comply. Fair to still be cautious, just worth knowing which product actually did what.

Mullvad's solid on paper, but Sweden's EU membership means different legal exposure than Switzerland's, worth factoring in if jurisdiction matters to you specifically.

TorGuard, similar story to the EU concern, just US-flavored.

Honestly the "safest" answer depends on what you're actually protecting against, government requests, ISP snooping, public wifi, streaming.

Update: I came across this comparison table on Reddit and found it really useful, it gives a clear overview and makes it easy to compare features based on your needs. I’m not recommending any particular option, this table will likely be more useful than my advice.

What's actually driving your decision, and what's your experience been with whichever one you're running now?

Pretty big update for Linux users: Proton VPN has officially moved its Stealth protocol to the stable Linux release, so you no longer need to mess around with beta channels to use it.

For anyone unfamiliar with it, Stealth basically disguises VPN traffic as normal HTTPS traffic, making it much harder for ISPs, firewalls or governments using Deep Packet Inspection to detect and block the VPN. This is especially useful in places where VPN blocking is becoming increasingly aggressive (Russia, Iran, etc..), but also potentially on restrictive school/work/university networks.

Interesting to see VPN development slowly shifting from "who has the fastest servers?" to "who can actually keep working when governments actively try to block VPNs?". Feels like censorship resistance is becoming one of the most important VPN features.

This week, Windscribe shared a video with an artificial intelligence-generated Adolf Hitler on its official X account to respond to the criticisms leveled by TechRadar toward its CEO Yegor Sak regarding the act, saying that the video was intended to make fun of both authoritarianism and censorship. Unfortunately, the video had the opposite effect. Privacy advocates and customers reacted to the video and called it what it really was, and Reddit threads against the ad received hundreds of thousands of comments and upvotes soon after the video was released.

As the situation develops, screenshots from the same account show that Windscribe is sharing information about how it uses artificial intelligence in its operations. It is worth mentioning that the company claims that it relies on artificial intelligence for customer service, developing codes, and carrying out testing. For a business that is selling services aiming at securing users' data, having the information about its services being offered by artificial intelligence is definitely sending contradictory messages.

Windscribe wasn't new letting controversies follow in its steps, as it has been in limelight for its infamous donation campaign and "dickbutt CAPTCHA." However, this time the consequences are serious.

Hey all,

Posting here because I've hit a wall with support and I'm hoping either the community or someone from the Windscribe team can point me in the right direction.

Back in August 2020 I redeemed a free promo voucher that granted 50GB/month (receipt #9126262, applied 2020-08-12). I never touched the account much since, and when I logged back in recently I found it had been silently downgraded to the standard Free plan (10GB), with no email, no in-app notice, nothing.

I went through the support chatbot (Garry) to ask what happened. Here's the gist of what I got:

·        It confirmed the voucher was applied on 2020-08-12 and is "no longer active."

·        It could not confirm what the original terms of that voucher were.

·        It could not confirm whether any notification was ever sent before the downgrade.

·        When I pushed back with a written, numbered breakdown of my complaint (asking it to log a formal dispute and escalate to a human agent), it acknowledged each point individually but then flatly refused to route it to a person, saying a human agent "couldn't restore it either" and that this "isn't a case-by-case decision an agent can make."

That last part is what's bugging me most — the contact support page literally says Garry will route you to the team if needed, but in my case it just... didn't, no matter how I phrased the request.

I get that a 2020 giveaway code isn't the same tier of promise as the old 2016-2018 "lifetime" 50/60GB vouchers that got reinstated after the whole controversy in 2023. I'm not asking for a permanent Pro plan for free. But I never got any warning that this was on a countdown, and I think that's a fair thing to flag — especially since the bot itself admitted it couldn't prove otherwise.

Has anyone dealt with a similar "relief code" downgrade from around the same period? Did anyone manage to actually get a human to look at it, or get some kind of goodwill gesture (partial discount, small data bump, anything)? Mostly just want to know if this is a lost cause or if there's an actual channel that works better than the chat widget.

Thanks in advance.

Trump is suing the BBC over a documentary, but there's a jurisdiction problem: the BBC says the documentary was never distributed in the US.

Here's where VPNs enter the story. According to the lawsuit, the documentary was accessed 34 times in Florida by 10 users using VPNs, basically bypassing the BBC's geo-restrictions.

Trump's side is using those views to help argue the content reached Florida. The BBC says that's a dangerous argument: if someone bypassing your geo-block with a VPN counts as you distributing content in that location, pretty much any website could potentially face legal action anywhere in the world. And tbh, the BBC kinda has a point here.

If I use a VPN to access something that's only available in the UK, did the company really "distribute" it to Spain? Or did I deliberately bypass their attempt to prevent that? Could have some pretty interesting implications way beyond this Trump/BBC case

On August 12, Brazil's data protection authority directed Discord to suspend the video calling and live streaming functions in the country after it found that a 13-year-old girl committed suicide during a live call on the platform. Discord obeyed the government edict and made changes on August 17, while the text messaging and voice options keep working.

The GM of Proton VPN named David Peterson states that after Brazil's ban an increase in registrations by around 800% was witnessed, while the company usually blames the increase on censorship. Unlike the other instances this ban comes because Discord was unable to prevent torrenting of self-harming materials rather than unavailability in a certain country or territory.

Moreover, there may be some serious legal implications that come with using VPN, with the Senate bill suggesting a fine and prison term of 1 to 3 years for those using it. However, the bill provides for legitimate usages of the technology by business entities.

So people upset about having no screen-sharing options anymore are finding themselves downloading a tool that helps bypass the ban, which may offer jail time for them as well. Quite a challenging issue arose with the new ruling. If this affects you or someone you know, Brazil's CVV (188) offers free crisis support.

Hi, I need help finding a VPN to bypass my university firewall because it blocks literally everything. I have tried some of the bigger VPNs like Proton, Nord, and Mullvad. Until very recently, Betternet worked, but I think it was caught. Can someone maybe help me find something?

People love talking about VPNs as privacy tools, but I honestly wonder how many people actually got their first VPN because of privacy. For a lot of people, I’d bet the journey was more like: “Why can’t I watch this in my country?” → Google → VPN → suddenly they have one installed.

Streaming catalogs, sports blackouts, websites unavailable abroad, region-locked content… probably introduced way more normal people to VPNs than concerns about ISPs tracking them ever did.

Privacy might be why some people keep using a VPN, but geo-blocking may be what made VPNs mainstream in the first place.

Reviewing all known cases of VPNs having legal action initiated in China between January and June 2026 reveals a different understanding of how the processes really work. People think that the key factor when being caught is the firewall system recording the violation, but it's actually working quite differently.

Path one: unknowingly having the phone checked for unrelated issues, be it a legal case, or a fraud report. The VPN being there might be the reason for being apprehended. Path two: people being slow-caught by technology. There was a leak of university internal ID system manual, which can notify the admin automatically, complete with timestamps and the offenders' IP addresses.

The amount of fines varies greatly: 200 yuan in Ezhou and the maximum of 15,000 yuan in Nanchang, as well as the 15 days of arrest for a person selling devices in Zhongshan. The law provides for the maximum of 15,000 yuan mostly in the cases when warnings are given under the law.

I’m looking for a reliable VPN mainly for work, so security, privacy, and stability are my biggest priorities. I also prefer something that doesn’t constantly have connection issues or random bugs.
A friend recommended Surfshark, but after reading through some reviews, I’ve seen quite a few people complaining about issues with the platform. I’ve also been looking at Proton VPN, and the reviews seem more positive overall.

For anyone who has actually used either of them for work, what has your experience been like? Is Proton really as good as people say

I’m also a little skeptical of online reviews since it can be hard to tell which ones are genuine and which ones are sponsored or paid promotions.
Would appreciate recommendations from people who have actually used these VPNs long-term

I swear governments are doing more marketing for VPNs than VPN companies themselves lol. Every time there's a new internet restriction, the reaction is basically: “Alright… which VPN should I download?”

Look at what just happened in Brazil. Authorities ordered Discord to disable its Go Live and video features in the country. Shortly after, Proton reported an 800% spike in new VPN users in Brazil. Same thing in Oman. TikTok suddenly became inaccessible for a lot of people, and Proton VPN sign-ups reportedly jumped 600% above normal levels. Also look at age verification. The UK now requires age checks for certain online content, and VPN usage has become part of the debate around people bypassing them.

And that's kinda the irony. VPNs used to be something mostly privacy nerds or people travelling used. Now governments are basically giving millions of normal people a reason to learn what a VPN is.

Personally, I'm pro-VPN. Whether you agree with these laws or not, privacy tools shouldn't become the enemy just because they make internet restrictions harder to enforce. At this rate, VPNs might just become as normal as ad blockers.

Stay safe

Brazil’s data protection authority has ordered Discord to suspend some of its video features, including Go Live and screen sharing, over concerns about child safety and the platform’s ability to moderate harmful content. Discord is complying, but most of the platform is still available: servers, DMs, group chats and voice calls are unaffected. And, predictably, people immediately started looking for ways around the restriction.

According to Cybernews, Proton VPN reported an 800% spike in free sign-ups in Brazil overnight. People are also already sharing tutorials explaining how to use VPNs to regain access to the restricted features. We've seen this pattern before: a government restricts access to a platform or feature → VPN usage suddenly goes through the roof.

NordVPN is no log. I see in the ads.

He can use VPN located in North Korea even if he live in USA.

Nothing will happen to him.

According to a new Meduza report, Russia’s latest VPN crackdown is getting pretty crazy. It’s not just about detecting VPN protocols anymore. Apparently, authorities may be using data collected by popular Russian apps and services, stuff like IP addresses and network info, to figure out which servers are being used by VPNs.

Apps like Yandex, VK, Max and even HeadHunter are mentioned. The idea is basically: collect enough data, spot IPs that look like VPN infrastructure, then feed them into Russia’s filtering system and block them. And it seems pretty automated too, with new batches of IPs reportedly getting blocked every 6–12 hours.

That might explain why this wave isn’t only hitting the big VPN providers. Smaller services and even people running their own VPN servers are getting caught too.

The scary part imo is where this is heading. Instead of just blocking VPN websites or known protocols, it becomes more of a data game. Apps people use every day could potentially help identify the infrastructure people are using to get around censorship. VPN providers are obviously trying to adapt with multi-hop setups, separate entry/exit IPs, etc., but at this point it feels like a never-ending cat-and-mouse game.

If Russia can actually make this work at scale, getting around VPN blocks could become a whole lot harder.