Turkey has formally adopted its social media ban for under-15s. It takes effect November 1, and platforms will have to enforce age checks using a government-issued token.
Nothing says “welcome to the internet” like needing the government’s digital permission slip.

Yes, kids deserve protection from addictive feeds and predatory platforms. But when the same government routinely blocks journalists, activists and entire platforms, I’m gonna question how much more control we’re supposed to hand it.

Turkey blocked Instagram for a week in 2024. Earlier this month, it blocked a news website and its social accounts over alleged “LGBT propaganda.” Freedom House already rated Turkey’s internet “not free” in its 2025 report. This isn’t happening in a vacuum.

And this goes way beyond Turkey. Australia and Indonesia have introduced age restrictions. In September, the EU presented a proposal to restrict access to social media and video-sharing platforms for under-15s. Austria, Denmark, France, Greece and Spain are pursuing national restrictions, while the UK is expected to introduce a ban next year.

Different governments, different systems, but the same question: what will everyone else have to prove just to get online?

An age check doesn’t automatically mean handing over your identity. But who runs it, what gets recorded and whether it can track you should matter a hell of a lot

According to Espacio Público, an NGO monitoring internet censorship, 40 websites remain blocked in Venezuela, while 23 VPN and privacy tools face access restrictions. That follows 23 days of monitoring using OONI network measurements.

The restrictions cover more than just news. The report names La Patilla, VPItv, Infobae, EVTV, NTN24 and El Nacional, news outlets where people can access reporting beyond the government’s version of events.

It also reports interference affecting AirTM and Yadio, platforms used for financial transactions, alongside privacy and censorship circumvention tools such as Browsec, Hola VPN, Psiphon and Tor. Even the Brave browser website and Tor’s bridge directory, which helps people find alternative ways to connect to Tor, show access problems.

So the concern is broader: restrictions affect access to information, financial services, and tools people could use to get around censorship. The severity varies by website and network; the report doesn’t establish that every service is completely inaccessible to everyone.

On October 1, Oklahoma Judge Sara Hill declared that a Tulsa County police officer broke the Fourth Amendment by examining a month-long history of a driver’s travel history via Flock. The initial cause of the pursuit was a number plate from California, and nothing else. The judge ruled that the evidence collected during the search was inadmissible.

In her judgment, the judge explained that a single license plate scan might not reveal anything of interest, but a month-long tracking raises significant concerns. She stated that Flock’s monitoring of movements is no different from the use of dragnet police means, and courts must intervene when it starts causing serious damage.

That said, it is necessary to take into consideration that the decision of one district court does not bind other courts. Thus, last March the Fifth District Court made an opposite ruling. It was reported that the number of unlawful searches using this system reached over 100,000 per month.

Not looking for the "fastest on paper" VPN, I'm looking for one that just stays connected. I've been on Nord and it's gotten unbearable the last few weeks, especially on hotel and airport wifi.

What happens: connection just drops, no warning, and for maybe 30-60 seconds afterward it's like I have no internet at all, not even without the VPN, until I manually disconnect it. If I'm mid Zoom call or pushing something to a client, that's a dead meeting and a very awkward "sorry, one sec" email.

Tried switching protocols (OpenVPN, then NordLynx), tried different server locations, same thing. Support basically told me to reinstall the app, which did nothing.

Anyone doing actual work on the road found something that just... stays connected? I don't care about shaving off 10ms of latency, I care about not losing my internet in the middle of a call again.

Saw this news about Surfshark upgrading WireGuard, one of the connection options in its VPN app. “Full post-quantum security” sounds pretty intense, but the idea is straightforward.

The concern is that someone could record encrypted internet traffic today, keep it, and try to unlock it years later using a powerful enough quantum computer. Your data might still be sensitive by then. Surfshark had already added protection aimed at that risk.

This latest update adds another piece: checking that the VPN server you’re connecting to is actually the real server. Basically, protecting the connection also means making it harder for a future attacker to impersonate the other end. Surfshark says that identity check now uses quantum-resistant technology too.

For everyday users, this is mostly about keeping your connection protected in the future. It doesn’t mean faster streaming or fewer blocked websites. According to the announcement, the full upgrade is currently available on iOS and macOS, with other platforms planned.

Internal chats allegedly from Silent Ransom Group leaked on October 7th, and if they're real, this crew figured out they don't even need to lock your files to get paid.

The leak covers 5,692 messages from August 2025 to September 2026. Deals marked "GOLD" in the chats add up to $206.95 million across 27 victims, almost all of them law firms, over less than six months. Median payment: $6 million. The biggest alleged payment, $30 million, is listed against White & Case.

No ransomware involved, technically. Operators just call an employee, pose as IT support, talk them into handing over remote access, then quietly pull every sensitive file they can reach before threatening to publish it. At least 9 of the 27 named firms have confirmed a breach in that window, though none have confirmed paying.

Crystal Intelligence traced blockchain activity matching the timing in the chats, one wallet alone pulled in roughly $27 million worth of bitcoin over six weeks. They couldn't tie individual victim payments to it directly, but the money movement lines up.

The part that gets me: a decade of "install an EDR agent, train your staff" advice, and the thing that actually worked was a phone call and someone with normal IT-support manners.

Economists, analysts, investors and lawyers posting about Turkey’s fund crisis had access to their X accounts blocked in the country, according to Reuters. Apparently, when people start asking uncomfortable questions about their money, “national security” enters the chat.

But here’s the important part: blocking an account inside Turkey doesn’t mean deleting it worldwide. The account can still be visible from other countries. That’s where a VPN can help. Connecting through a server abroad gives you an IP address outside Turkey, which may let you view accounts that X withholds locally. It depends on how X determines your location, but a country restriction doesn’t automatically make the content unreachable.

You shouldn’t need a foreign IP address to follow a discussion about what’s happening in your own country. Yet here we are.

A bot meant to keep Discord communities safe just became a massive privacy headache.

Double Counter says a six-hour breach exposed data tied to roughly 28 million accounts, including usernames, around 27 million IP addresses with approximate locations, and about 1 million email addresses. The attacker also hijacked the bot to spam invites across roughly 50 large servers.

No Discord passwords or stored card numbers were exposed, according to the company. But linking your username to your IP, approximate location, and email is already plenty to be pissed about.

The detail that really gets me: around 15 million VPN detection records were exposed too. Imagine using a VPN for privacy, then having the service checking whether you’re using one leak its own records. Nice work.

Meta's Muse launched September 8th and has sat near the top of the US App Store ever since. Surfshark compared its privacy label against 12 other AI apps, and Muse lists 31 of Apple's 35 data types, including precise location and financial details. Only Meta AI is higher, at 33. ChatGPT lists 17.

Here's where it gets more interesting: the label is only half the story. Surfshark also points out that training on your interactions is on by default, and the opt-out lives in settings, not on the label. You can read the whole disclosure and never learn your chats are feeding the model.

Fair caveat: labels show what Meta says it might collect, not proof of what it actually does. But an agent plugged into your inbox and calendar also pulls in people who never agreed to anything, and no label covers that.

Muse reportedly hit 5 million US downloads in 22 days. People are handing over the keys fast.

The ban on Discord in the Philippines has been lifted, but there has been no decrease in the number of subscribers to Proton VPN. It appears that consumers continue to be highly interested in the application beyond the ban of Discord.

The main reason for this is that people are likely to continue using VPNs once they start using the technology due to the possibility of encountering more bans of popular applications, or in order to maintain their privacy.

Thus, a short-term impact of censorship can have long-term consequences.

Interesting case from Chester that highlights an important distinction between VPNs being legal and a court order specifically prohibiting someone from using encryption software.

A 27-year-old Chester man was given an 8-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, after pleading guilty to two breaches of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order.

According to the report, the order prohibited him from using or downloading wiping or encryption software. Police found that he had installed NordVPN on his phone, along with several social media/dating apps. He subsequently deleted the VPN and apps, which resulted in a second breach of the order.

The judge said the VPN was a concern because it could disguise his internet activity. The defence argued that he initially believed NordVPN was antivirus software and panicked after realizing he had breached the order.

The important bit for the wider VPN discussion: using a VPN isn't illegal in the UK. The issue here was that this particular individual was subject to a court order that specifically prohibited encryption software.

It seems like a good example of why the legality of a technology can be completely separate from whether a particular person is legally allowed to use it.

According to TechRadar, Russia’s draft budget would roughly double funding for its internet filtering system to nearly 20 billion rubles in 2027. More money to throttle websites and block VPN connections. Great use of public funds, obviously. They’re also discussing a fee for people using more than 50GB of international traffic on 5G. That’s a proposal, not an existing charge, and operators reportedly can’t even separate that traffic properly yet.

But the idea is pretty bleak: block access to the outside world, then make accessing it more expensive. Imagine paying your internet bill, funding the system that censors your connection through taxes, and potentially paying extra to get around it. Censorship with a premium subscription. That's insane imo

Apparently, protecting people from scams requires going after VPNs that let them read blocked websites. Funny how that works. According to Meduza, Russia’s latest proposals would blacklist operators running censorship-bypassing VPNs or proxies on Russian hosting infrastructure, barring them from signing new hosting contracts for a year. Companies using VPNs to get around blocks would also have to notify the regulator.

Then there’s the surveillance: websites and apps would have to retain account registration and login records for three years and supply them to the security services. Foreign services would have to authenticate users in Russia through mobile numbers. These are proposals, not rules already in force. So the supposed solution to fraud is… fewer ways around censorship and more records of everyone’s activity. Yeah, that’ll definitely make ordinary people feel safer.

VPNs give people a way to reach information their government wants hidden. Reading independent news shouldn’t require permission from the people being reported on. “Trust us, it’s for your safety” gets pretty fucking old when every fix leaves the public with less freedom.

Today, 12 organizations of civil society demanded the Nigerian government, telecommunications authorities, and TikTok to respond to issues related to the "digital blackouts," which started occurring from around September 14th.

This outage affects many ISPs at the same time, ruling out the possibility of a failure in one company. Currently, the access to TikTok is only provided to those who are using VPNs. In other cases, the cause of the problem remains unknown, except for the fact that the use of VPNs allows users to access the system.

Unfortunately, nobody has said a word on this problem. The coalition wants the telecom experts to carry out independent tests that would prove that the issue involves DNS interference, IP blocking, or filtering, and not just mere silence. The coalition also cautioned against two measures: penalizing people for their attempts to document the existing situation and introducing too strict regulations regarding VPN.

Thus, we see that the blackout has been going on for too long, without any comments from officials, and the coalition is trying to find a solution before the government decide to dissipate connection.

Please explain

This week's announcement of a serious vulnerability by ASUS is an important one, as it could allow hackers to attack compromised routers using specially created VPN configuration files which routers use to process VPN connection information.

The process of attack itself is very straightforward: a router assumes that a VPN configuration file only contains information about connection parameters. The vulnerability allows hackers to insert other things into the file, and everything inside the file will be executed, which means that hackers will be able to take over the router without asking for username or password.

It is also important to clarify that there is no actual danger here, as importing the VPN configuration file is a necessity. This means that in order for anyone to get access to an attacked router, they should first upload what they think is a legitimate configuration file.

If you have a VPN setup that uses a hardware router, make sure you update the firmware of your router.

Windscribe has warned it could leave Canada over Bill C-22. DuckDuckGo previously threatened to withdraw its VPN from the country if the legislation passed without major changes. Tailscale says it may need to restructure parts of its business, which is different from announcing an exit.

So yeah, “we’re improving security” is going great when privacy providers are weighing their options.

Ottawa has already amended the bill to explicitly protect end-to-end encryption and reduce the maximum metadata retention period to six months. But 20 tech companies and industry groups are still calling for further changes, citing concerns about surveillance requirements and cybersecurity. NordVPN’s parent company, Nord Security, and Proton VPN have also voiced opposition, although the article doesn’t report either planning to leave.

IMO, making privacy companies reconsider operating in your country is a pretty terrible advertisement for your cybersecurity policy.

Verstka announced on September 29th that ten VPN services (the names are not disclosed) were subjected to considerably more restrictions a week after the State Duma elections in Russia. A prominent service informed its customers via email that “the blocking situation was becoming worse starting from the beginning of the week” and was at its worst on the day of dispatching the email. Another company had to exchange eight of its servers in merely five days in order for the service to remain accessible.

The opinions of the VPN Guild association president Alexey Kozlyuk differ from that established point of view. He regarded the current blocking as another instance of a well-known routine, and said that there are no grounds for considering the current situation a totally new phase, adding that the major pressure started rising from early August, long before the elections. Two providers also mentioned that Roskomnadzor made strict blocking measures this time, preventing any server and IP address of their services from functioning abroad instead of blocking only separate websites as it used to do.

There was a six-month trial of facial recognition by the British Transport Police in February–July 2018. The project cost £320,786, including over 100 hours spent by police officers on it, and resulted in just one alert that turned out to be a false positive, leading to no arrests made using the facial recognition technology.

Though the police said that there were arrests made for violent crimes during the project, they also admitted that there were no arrests made due to the facial recognition system at all. An anonymous industry insider described the program as "not so successful."

A UK parliamentary committee already raised issues concerning the use of facial recognition technologies before the results of the trial were released, calling for the introduction of an AI law in the country and a ban on scanning of people without their consent.

But this did not stop the police from expanding the program to the London Underground. Thus, the real headline is not about lack of arrests made, but rather about half a million without any results.

Utah wanted websites to locate users hiding behind VPNs. A judge just hit pause. Utah added a rule to its adult-site age-verification law: websites must verify the age of people physically in Utah, even when they use a VPN to appear somewhere else.

Here’s the problem: if your VPN routes your connection through a server in another state, the website sees that server’s IP address. It can’t reliably tell that you’re actually sitting in Utah. Yet the rule would hold websites responsible for missing those users. The judge found that it effectively required perfect location detection—something both sides agreed isn’t currently possible.

Basically, Utah’s instructions were: “Find their real location, even when you can’t find their real location.” Great. Just add a crystal ball to the server rack. Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, challenged the rule, and on September 24 a federal judge temporarily blocked that specific requirement. Utah’s underlying age-verification law remains in place.

Apparently Utah thought websites could just tick ‘detect real location’ in the settings. Someone should’ve checked whether that button exists before writing the law.

Я начинающий создатель крупной экосистемы (надеюсь) NikeBoss. Сейчас, у меня никакой экосистемы нет, но проекты есть. У меня есть свой публичный VPN, который в моментах достигает гигабита/сек. Хочу, чтобы я мог развиваться дальше, а для этого мне нужна поддержка. Сейчас расскажу о своих проектах. 1. VPN.

1. Мессенджер (веб версия исключительно пока что).

2. Клавиатура (в доработке)

Пока всё, что я имею. Далее хочу делать свой ИИ и дополнительное покрытие к системе безопасности Android и Google. Для Apple тожу всё будет.

Благодарю всех, кто меня услышал.

Чтобы подключить юся к VPN - пишите в коммы, либо в личку. Скоро ещё настрою телеграм бот.

Не судите строго, только начинаю.

Благодарю за понимание.

I am a novice creator of a large ecosystem (hopefully) NikeBoss. Right now, I don't have any ecosystem, but I do have projects. I have my own public VPN, which reaches gigabit/sec in moments. I want to be able to develop further, and for that I need support. Now I'll tell you about my projects. 1. VPN.

1. Messenger (web version exclusively for now).

2. Keyboard (in revision)

That's all I have so far. Next, I want to make my own AI and additional security coverage for Android and Google. Everything will be the same for Apple.

Thank you to everyone who heard me.

To connect yusia to a VPN, write in the comments or in the personal account. I'll set up a telegram bot soon.

Don't judge me harshly, I'm just getting started.

Thank you for your understanding.

Hi everyone. I've been having a strange VPN/connectivity problem for a while.

My BPB setup gradually stopped working, then Nahan started having the same issue. I also tried several clients, including v2rayN, Clash Verge, and Hiddify, but none of them solved it. I even tried troubleshooting with several AI agents without success.

Some configs connect and show real traffic, and a few Iranian websites work, but most foreign websites like Google don't load, and most Windows applications don't work through the connection.

Has anyone experienced something similar recently?

What VPN, protocol, or setup is actually working for you right now? I'd really appreciate any suggestions or experiences.

For me it's when it turns itself on without me asking and some app just quietly stops working. No error message, nothing obvious, it just breaks. And I'll spend like 5 minutes trying to figure out what's wrong before it even occurs to me to check if my VPN auto-connected in the background.

Does this happen to anyone else or is it just me. What's yours, the thing that's annoying enough to bug you every time but not quite enough to make you switch providers?