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VPN Blog

Category: security-news clear

Your VPN App Is Not the Tunnel: Proton's 2026 Tracker Study
Security News6 min read

Your VPN App Is Not the Tunnel: Proton's 2026 Tracker Study

A VPN can encrypt every byte you send and still hand your location, device identifiers and carrier to libraries inside the app. Proton AG's 2026 study reports trackers in most mobile VPN apps. Here is what the app layer sees, why it identifies you even with your IP hidden, and how to audit your phone.

What a VPN Hides and What It Cannot: Metadata Limits in 2026
Security News5 min read

What a VPN Hides and What It Cannot: Metadata Limits in 2026

In September 2026 a U.S. senator urged the NSA to update federal VPN guidance, citing a congressional memo that said encryption strength alone does not stop bulk metadata collection. This article explains what a single-hop VPN does and does not hide, and what multi-hop, onion and relay designs change.

What to Ask After a VPN Vendor Breach: Surfshark 2026
Security News8 min read

What to Ask After a VPN Vendor Breach: Surfshark 2026

Surfshark disclosed in September 2026 that an unauthorised party had reached an internal engineering test server left misconfigured and reachable from the internet. No user data and no VPN traffic were affected. Here is what the disclosure says, and the questions worth asking any VPN vendor after a breach.

India’s VPN Data Retention Rules 2026: What They Mean for You
Security News5 min read

India’s VPN Data Retention Rules 2026: What They Mean for You

India’s reported VPN rules would require providers to retain user data and IP addresses for at least five years, including after a customer leaves. Here is what is reportedly being kept, why a logged IP plus a timestamp is more identifying than it sounds, what leaving a jurisdiction does not fix, and what you can do.

AI Scams in 2026: What a VPN Protects You From — and the Defense Stack That Actually Works
Security News4 min read

AI Scams in 2026: What a VPN Protects You From — and the Defense Stack That Actually Works

Voice-clone calls, deepfake video calls, and hyper-personalized phishing are now mainstream threats, and they do not target hardened technologists — they target grandparents and teenagers. This guide is honest about what a VPN does and does not do against AI-driven scams, and pairs it with the defenses that block most of the damage.

Router VPN 2026: Secure Your Whole Home Network and Smart-Home Devices in One Place
Security News4 min read

Router VPN 2026: Secure Your Whole Home Network and Smart-Home Devices in One Place

Your smart thermometer, TV, baby monitor, and doorbell each phone home over your home network, and most of them give you no way to configure a VPN. A router-level VPN puts the whole household — every IoT gadget included — behind one encrypted tunnel. Here is how to choose, set up, and keep it honest in 2026.

VPN Detection in 2026: How Sites and Streaming Platforms Block You — and What Actually Works
Security News4 min read

VPN Detection in 2026: How Sites and Streaming Platforms Block You — and What Actually Works

Why did Netflix just log you out mid-episode? In 2026 the arms race between VPNs and the platforms that try to block them has moved far beyond IP blacklists. Here is how sites, payments processors, and streaming services detect VPN traffic now — and which obfuscation tools genuinely keep you connected.

Does Your VPN Sell Your Data? The 2026 Data-Sharing Problem and How to Pick a Genuinely Audited No-Logs VPN
Security News4 min read

Does Your VPN Sell Your Data? The 2026 Data-Sharing Problem and How to Pick a Genuinely Audited No-Logs VPN

A 2026 investigation reported that dozens of VPN apps feed user activity data to Facebook, and polite marketing reassures you the industry is clean. The truth is that 'no-logs' is a legal claim your VPN makes about itself, and only an independent audit makes it worth trusting. Here is how to verify a VPN actually keeps your data.

Is VPN Use Legal in 2026? A Country-by-Country Status and Travel Guide
Security News6 min read

Is VPN Use Legal in 2026? A Country-by-Country Status and Travel Guide

VPNs are legal in the vast majority of countries, but a small set of regimes actively restrict or criminalize their use. Here is the practical 2026 status for the countries business travelers actually visit, what the UK Online Safety Act age-verification regime means for VPN users, and how to think about the legal risk before you connect.

Your Free VPN Is Not Free: The Largest Independent Investigation of Free Android VPNs and What It Found
Security News7 min read

Your Free VPN Is Not Free: The Largest Independent Investigation of Free Android VPNs and What It Found

An independent lab tested the 100 most popular free Android VPN apps — roughly 2.5 billion combined installs — and found DNS leaks in 83 of them, malware flags on 19 percent, third-party tracker SDKs in 84 percent, and misrepresentations of data collection in 93 percent of the Play Store data safety labels. Here is what the data says, which apps were the worst offenders, and what to use instead.

VPN vs Residential Proxy: What the LG webOS Ban and FBI's NetNut Seizure Mean for Your Privacy in 2026
Security News6 min read

VPN vs Residential Proxy: What the LG webOS Ban and FBI's NetNut Seizure Mean for Your Privacy in 2026

LG has started banning residential proxy SDKs from webOS apps. The FBI just seized hundreds of NetNut domains and the Popa botnet. If you thought a VPN was the same thing as a residential proxy, the last two weeks of news make it clear that they are not — and the risks of confusing them are landing on consumer devices.

Best VPN 2026: Independent Audits, Post-Quantum Encryption, and the Five Providers Worth Your Money
Security News7 min read

Best VPN 2026: Independent Audits, Post-Quantum Encryption, and the Five Providers Worth Your Money

We compared every major consumer VPN on the criteria that actually matter in 2026 — independent no-logs audits, post-quantum encryption, jurisdiction, RAM-only servers, kill switch behavior, streaming unblocking, and renewal pricing. Here are the five providers worth your money, in the order the independent test labs recommend.