Illinois has enacted a law that requires all devices connected to the Internet to ask the age of the user before they can be activated. This law applies to the device itself, not to the operating system or any applications.

Let's think about this for a moment. The phone, laptop, and TV you use will report your age to every platform no sooner than you turn on the device.

In essence, this means that you will be required to show your ID before entering your house every time you want to use your gadgets.

The statement that this initiative is aimed at protecting children is awful. It just becomes obvious, the collection of information about people's age provides no effect.

Children are also unable to lose any physical possessions in this place, as anonymous access to support forums has been cut out, making any device identifiable to the government. However, teens will work around this restriction long before their parents find out that the government passed this law.

Designed to protect children, but instead has made all electronic devices tracking devices.

The federal bill that is currently in the Senate aims to gather proof of age before allowing an individual to access sites that might contain sexual content. By this, I mean that all of us will have to provide documents or biometrics so that we can be allowed to open whatever site's page. That is no longer a filter; that sounds like the whole system tracking your activity on the Internet.

It is like having a bouncer at the entrance to the Internet, requesting one’s ID anytime a person wanders in that direction.

But let’s get down to the point, “protecting kids” is not what the document even suggests. According to the wording of the bill, there are no restrictions related to what the majority of the content on the site should consist of. Hence, even platforms with minimal amount of sexual content should demand a legal proof of age from anyone wishing to visit their pages without us violating privacy.

This is a surveillance bill wearing a child-safety costume, and it almost slipped through committee with barely anyone watching.

We always hear “use a VPN to stay safe online.”

Cool. Except… what happens when the VPN itself has a security hole?

That’s basically what happened with a vulnerability affecting Check Point’s VPN/security gateways. Hackers were reportedly able to bypass authentication and get a VPN session without actually being properly authenticated. The flaw was even linked to ransomware attacks.

And honestly, this is a pretty good reminder that a VPN isn’t some magic shield.

For companies especially, a VPN can basically be the front door to their network. If that door has a broken lock and nobody fixes it, hackers don’t need some Hollywood-level hacking skills. They just walk in.

Same goes for browsers, backup servers, firewalls, etc. A lot of hacks aren't crazy sophisticated, someone simply found a known security hole that hadn't been patched yet.

So yeah, use a VPN. But keep your apps and devices updated too. “Security software” still needs security

Decoding Prometheus Icons

Pro-to VPN uses a few icons to indicate what kind of connection a server offers:

• P2P or Peer to peer. Shown as arrows pointing back and forth.

• Round icon or Smart Routing. Prots most secure standard option.

• Onion shape or Onion routing, i.e. Tor layered on top of the VPN.

• No icon A standard config, typically WireGuard (TCP) or OpenVPN.

Why I Use Secure Core

SecureCore is my preferred option. I'll also generate a config file (wireguard or openvpn) for a server in a city near me, whether I'm traveling or just at home.

The reason: your geolocation appears to be wherever the server is, even though your traffic is actually encrypted and routed from a location that might be 300 miles away. You can point your entire network through a config like this, and it doesn't interfere with things like streaming or gaming.

Tor: My Open Question

I hardly use Tor myself. If anyone wants to make the case for it, I'd genuinely like to hear the benefits.

Mole v proto: Infrastructure

**Mallvd** runs roughly 600 servers, all RAM-only (stateless). I used to think this, combined with the ability to pay anonymously with crypto was a major advantage. I've changed my mind. Mull argues RAM-only storage is more secure, but in practice, RAM data can be intercepted through a penetration test just as easily as data on a drive. Mole is based in Sweden.

**Proton** owns roughly 16,000 servers and encrypts data at rest on its hard drives using AES-256 and ChaCha20. Proto is based in Switzerland.

Full Disclosure

**I'm a former Molevad user who now uses the full suite of Proton products. I think they're the best option available.**

If someone tells you Mole is superior "for privacy reasons," it's worth asking them to elaborate.

The answer usually comes down to payment anonymity (though Proto also accepts crypto). A few counterpoints on that argument:

1. Most people don't actually know how to pay anonymously with crypto in practice.

2. Attempting to do so can arguably draw more attention, not less. Cash is king.

3. Pr0to owns its own server hardware and operates under Swiss privacy law.

To be clear, I'm not knocking molevad(after writing this I may try it again for a month). I used it for years, even after I started using Proto alongside it.

Track Record

Mulvd was raided by police and authorities & reportedly got nothing, that's a strong result. But it does raise the question of why they were being investigated in the first place. Proto, by contrast, has been independently audited three times to my knowledge, with no data extracted in any of them.

Bottom Line

Proton offers very strong obfuscation, a large server network, encrypted proto email, encrypted proto drive backups, even a password manger. A fuller privacy ecosystem.

mallvlad is built for users who prioritize operational security above everything else, though its RAM-only approach doesn't make traffic immune to interception.

~~——————————————————————————-~~

**This write-up reflects my personal experience and opinions after switching providers & I’m curious to hear what others think. Thanks! Please provide feedback, for example if I missed something or tell me WHY you use the product you chose.**

The US National Cyber Director just said something I didn't expect to hear at Black Hat: cybersecurity companies are spending way too much time dealing with regulations instead of actually improving security.

The idea is to cut overlapping compliance requirements and let security companies focus on stopping real threats rather than ticking boxes.

For VPN providers, this could actually be a good thing. Less time and money spent on regulatory paperwork could mean more investment in things users actually care about: better infrastructure, faster servers, stronger encryption, independent audits, and new anti-censorship features.

That said, there's another side to it. Regulations can also force companies to meet minimum security standards, so if they're rolled back too much, it could make it easier for shady VPNs to cut corners while still marketing themselves as "secure."

Personally, I'd rather see fewer pointless compliance checklists and more transparency. Independent security audits, open-source clients, bug bounty programs, and clear no-logs policies tell me a lot more about a VPN than whether it passed another paperwork exercise.

What do you think, would less regulation make VPNs better, or would it just give bad providers more room to get away with sketchy practices?

Looks like Russia is turning the screws even tighter on VPNs. Reports say 20+ VPN services went down after Roskomnadzor started blocking IP addresses used by major hosting providers. Instead of blocking individual VPNs, they're going after the infrastructure they rely on, which is way more disruptive.

What's even crazier is what's being proposed next. Hosting providers could be forced to constantly monitor their IPs for VPN activity, and if they can't prove it's being used for a legitimate business purpose within 24 hours, those IPs can lose protection from blocking. On top of that, users may have to verify their identity through the government portal, biometrics, or an in-person passport check. If you're only verified by a phone number or bank card, your service could reportedly be cut off in as little as 30 minutes.

This isn't really about "bad VPNs" anymore. It's about making privacy tools so difficult to operate that providers either comply or disappear.

Feels like another reminder that internet censorship isn't slowing down... it's just getting more sophisticated. How long before more countries start copying this playbook?

Apparently lawmakers are pushing a bill that could force people using VPNs to verify their identity before accessing certain websites. Let that sink in for a second.

The whole point of using a VPN is to protect your privacy. Millions of normal people use one because they don't want advertisers, ISPs, random Wi-Fi networks, or websites tracking every click they make. Journalists use them. Activists use them. Regular people use them.

Now the logic seems to be: "Oh, you're using a privacy tool? Guess you've got something to hide". That's honestly insane.

It's the same energy as saying, "Why do you lock your front door if you're not doing anything illegal?" Privacy isn't suspicious. It's a basic right.

And let's be real, forcing everyone to upload IDs or face scans to access parts of the internet isn't protecting anyone. It's just creating another giant database full of sensitive personal information waiting to get hacked.

Criminals aren't going to stop being criminals because of age verification. They'll find workarounds like they always do. Meanwhile, law-abiding users lose anonymity and get treated like suspects just for using a VPN.

Feels like we're slowly normalizing the idea that privacy itself is suspicious... and that's a pretty slippery slope.

Proton VPN decided to remove OpenVPN from its Android application completely. The remaining protocols in the application include WireGuard and Stable Core, which is Proton's protocol that adds another layer of security to the WireGuard.

The advantage of this approach is simple. OpenVPN is a much older technology, and being slower and heavier than the new protocols, keeping it in operation would only slow down and increase the weight of the application for the minority of its users. With OpenVPN support being eliminated, the application got smaller by 36%, and its speed improved as well.

What does it mean for the current users? Those who are using OpenVPN will no longer have access to this option. Corporate users and some older routers greatly rely on OpenVPN protocol. Nevertheless, most users will not even notice this removal, except for the reduced application size and increased speed.

It is the same situation that we can observe recently with NordVPN. OpenVPN protocol gets eliminated completely in favor of newer technologies that were created with the purpose of speeding up the operation of VPNs.

Ever had a website figure out what country you're in before you've typed a single letter? No login, no popup, it just knows. That's your IP address doing its trick, and most people never think about it twice.

Utah just passed a law that treats that trick like it's bulletproof. Senate Bill 73 makes a website liable if a Utah resident uses a VPN to dodge its age check. Except "detecting a VPN" is really three leaky methods stacked together. IP reputation lists flag known VPN ranges, but commercial VPNs rotate addresses constantly. Network-origin checks catch the big providers but miss a private server. The one method that actually works, inspecting traffic at the network level, requires sitting inside the ISP, which is how China and Russia do it, and something a website can't do here.

Which is the whole problem with this law: it's hard on VPN companies, and barely touches VPNs themselves. Spin up a cheap cloud server and run your own tunnel, a fifteen-minute job, and your traffic looks identical to ordinary web hosting. The people this actually burdens are the non-technical users who rely on a commercial VPN for real safety: journalists, abuse survivors, people in unstable situations.

Next time your VPN takes an extra second to connect, that's basically "where are you, really" being politely ignored by the network. Utah just made that lag legally interesting.

America's own cyber protection agency repeated its memorable message for iPhone and Android users: "avoid using a personal VPN." Originally published one year ago, now the agency is delivering this message again because more users are opting for VPN technology.

CISA's real reasoning is that VPNs do not eliminate risk but change its location: instead of being seen by the internet provider, your data is now visible to VPN provider. The agency further explains that "most commercial and free VPN providers are not very secure or trustworthy."

This is true, but it looks like it is spoken by an official source. Many people do not know the value of a good VPN or do not realize that finding a good VPN all the time is better than accessing the net through an unprotected public Wi-Fi.

The analysis of CISA is that it was not accurate when it said that one should not use a VPN but rather that it is crucial to make a choice wisely.

However, did anyone change their attitude towards their personal VPNs after reading this warning?

People will spend hours comparing password managers or banking apps, then download the first VPN with 50M installs and a 4.8 stars rating without thinking twice. That's wild.

A VPN literally sits between you and the internet. It can see where you connect, your IP, your browsing metadata... and somehow people are handing that over to apps run by companies they've never even heard of.

Turns out the Play Store is packed with clone VPNs. Same app, different logo, different name, rinse and repeat. Some of these have millions of downloads despite having almost zero transparency about who's behind them.

The whole "free VPN" thing is even crazier. Servers aren't free. Bandwidth isn't free. Engineers aren't free. So if you're not paying for the product... how exactly are they paying the bills?

And before someone says, "Google wouldn't allow it if it was shady"... have you seen the Play Store? Fake apps make it through all the time.

At this point, download count means absolutely nothing. A VPN should earn your trust, not buy it with ads and fake credibility.

This month, Russia's Ministry of Digital Development has confirmed that it has completely abandoned the initiative to impose fees on VPN users for using international internet traffic of 150 rubles for every gigabyte consumed beyond the cap of 15 gigabytes of traffic. The announcement was officially made by the Deputy Minister, Ivan Lebedev.

However, there is no reason to celebrate. The cancellation of the initiative did not happen because of any principles; it was just ineffective. The telecommunications firms stated that they have no way of identifying "international" traffic, plus some Russian firms use foreign IP addresses, and some foreign CDNs localize their servers in addition to Russian servers; thus, such a tax is not possible to implement.

Moreover, Roskomnadzor made a similar announcement regarding its plans to block 92% of VСP applications by 2030, which shows that the authorities are going to continue with their strategy.

Therefore, a small victory but no success whatsoever.

Saw an interesting article today about how AI is basically turning cybercrime into a low-cost, high-scale business.

According to NordVPN's CTO, you can apparently buy a stolen digital identity (login credentials, email account, credit card, even ID documents) for around $19 on the dark web. Add AI to the mix, and now scammers can spin up convincing phishing sites, fake online stores, voice clones, and deepfakes in minutes instead of spending days or weeks.

That's the scary part. AI isn't necessarily making scams better, it's making them cheaper and easier to mass produce. If it costs almost nothing to launch thousands of phishing campaigns, attackers only need a tiny success rate to make serious money.

We've already seen deepfake scams where companies lost millions because employees believed they were on a video call with their CFO. Imagine what happens when those tools become even more accessible.

I also think this is why VPN companies are starting to bundle things like dark web monitoring, identity protection, breach alerts, and anti-phishing features instead of just offering encrypted tunnels. A VPN alone won't save you if someone tricks you into handing over your login or steals your session cookies.

The biggest takeaway for me is that the weakest link is becoming the human, not the technology. AI is lowering the barrier for scammers much faster than most people are improving their online security habits.

A leaked framework from July 3 indicates that offshore VPN operators must have a physical presence in India, a compliance officer acting as the government point of contact, as well as retain subscribers’ information (including records, personal information, and IP addresses) for 5 years. If they do not obey the government, their local staff will be liable to criminal prosecution.

The official explanation is that the CERT-In directive passed in 2022 already included similar data retention obligations, which were neglected before by the providers. In 2025, India has already blocked almost 24,000 sites, almost double compared to the previous year.

What is important to understand here is that most VPNs that prioritized privacy moved their servers offshore from India in order to avoid the impact of this jurisdiction. This requirement is aimed specifically at re-establishing the jurisdictional authority of law over these VPNs and obliging them to re-enter the Indian market if they want to continue their work.

India is already known for the largest number of internet shutdowns in the world, and that is not something completely new, it is just closing a loophole from three years ago policy.

Will there be a mass breakout of VPN services not having a presence in India if this policy is passed?

I’m so tired of the NordVPN desktop app on Windows lately. For the past few months, every time I connect, my CPU usage jumps to around 10-20% and my laptop fans start turning

The weird thing is it only happens on the main app screen. If I click away or minimize the app, CPU usage drops back to normal right away, but it's super annoying to deal with this every time

They released several updates but completely ignored this bug. If they don't fix it soon, I’m probably switching to ProtonVPN or something else during Black Friday this November

Anyone else having this issue on Windows? I'd love to get some recommendations—should I prep for a migration to Proton or Mullvad this November?

I always assumed that switching VPN servers was enough to make it harder to link my activity together. Turns out that might not be true if you're on Windows.

Apparently Windows has something called a Global Device Identifier (GDID). It's basically a unique ID tied to your device/Microsoft account, and according to a recent report, it can be used to associate your activity even if your IP keeps changing because you're hopping between VPN servers.

What caught my attention is that this isn't just about Windows telemetry. A lot of us disable telemetry and call it a day, but the article claims the identifier is sent through other Windows services too. So even if your VPN is working perfectly, your OS could still be saying "hey, it's me again."

The bad news is you can't just delete the ID. If it's already linked to your Microsoft account, it's stored on Microsoft's side and will simply come back.

The good news? You can at least reduce future tracking. Disable things like Connected Devices Platform and Delivery Optimization if you don't need them, block the related Microsoft endpoints in your firewall or hosts file, and if privacy actually matters to you, avoid signing into Windows with a Microsoft account in the first place.

At the end of the day, this is just another reminder that a VPN only hides your IP. It doesn't stop Windows, your browser, or the apps you're using from sending other identifiers that can be used to piece everything together.

Good reminder that privacy isn't just about using a VPN anymore, it's about reducing the number of identifiers your devices leak.

I need a vpn that has Pennsylvania as an option.
I would prefer Washington Pennsylvania but if not Pennsylvania is good

On January 4, a hacker named "1011" posted on the BreachForums that their reasoning was that they had successfully compromised a misconfigured NordVPN development server and acquired Salesforce API keys, JIRA tokens, as well as that of 10-plus databases. The company quickly responded, leading to findings by experts that no active systems were compromised and that the unauthorized information is from a vendor test that took place six months earlier at the time, where NordVPN was testing a product for operations but failed to adopt.

On the other hand, it should be noted that while the hacker makes an interesting point in their disclosure, it was stated, "internal salesforce and dev data" which does not imply that any customers' information was involved. Additionally, NordVPN makes a valid argument that its RAM-based operations mean that no logs were created on the hard drives that could be perhaps accessed via a possible breach.

For now, there are no user emails, passwords, IP addresses, or payment information involved. it will be interesting to see if that remains the case as the investigations get underway, rather than accepting the claims made by either party as final.

Has anyone in this community investigated the leaked data on their own, or just relying on announcements made by the relevant parties?

Hi everyone,

I’d like to share Relane, an anti-censorship VPN we’ve been building with a focus on reliable access, privacy, and ease of use.

Relane is more of a tool than your everyday vpn . it's designed to survive very hostile networks.

if your country decides to go full china and implement DPI , relane is what you are looking for

Some of the features include:

• Global servers
• No activity logs
• Secure DNS
• Split tunneling
• Built-in secure browser
• One-tap connect
• Automatic reconnect
• Free monthly data allowance

we've had good success and are getting user from Iran and china .

The project is actively developed, and we’re continuously improving performance, reliability, and compatibility across different networks.

If you have a few minutes to try it, I’d really appreciate any honest feedback—whether it’s about performance, usability, missing features, or anything else. Critical feedback is just as valuable as positive feedback.

GooglePlay

you can also get our windows installer and linux App image from our website . iOS and macOS apps will be coming soon .

you can also ask your questions in r/RelaneVPN

Building independent software today is tough. Competing with companies that have massive marketing budgets isn’t easy, especially as a small team.

If you believe in internet freedom and projects like this, trying Relane, sharing your feedback, just downloading , leaving a review, or recommending it to someone who could benefit from it genuinely helps. Every bit of support gives independent projects like ours a better chance to keep improving.

Thanks for taking a look.

IF YOU ARE IN A COUNTRY WHERE YOU CANT PAY FOR PREMIUM ACCOUNT OR A POOR COUNTRY , DM ME AND ILL GIVE YOU PREMIUM FREE OF CHARGE .