For my last post today, I want to highlight this Black Friday deal that Dan covered. The article highlights Surfshark’s ‘Search’ tool, which gives you an ad-free search experience that excludes sponsored results and personalized recommendations, just like the old days. The tool is available to subscribers of Surfshark One and One Plus, both currently on sale as part of the company’s Black Friday promotions.
Check the Black Friday offer here
That’s all from us today, we will be back tomorrow with more news, offers and exclusive information about VPN.
More than 60 organizations call for encryption protections
A coalition of more than 60 organizations signed a global statement urging governments to protect strong encryption. Signatories include the VPN Trust Initiative, which is a consortium of many top VPN providers. The compromise comes as several legislative proposals call for greater access to encrypted data, especially in the EU, where the debate over chat monitoring continues to intensify.
Read the full story here
UK Home Affairs Committee holds talks on digital ID
The UK’s Home Affairs Committee is currently gathering evidence on possible new forms of digital identification. This important session provides an opportunity to hear current concerns and potential benefits related to government-issued digital ID. The Committee will hear from experts on privacy and security risk issues, including the potential for massive data breaches and the erosion of civil liberties.
The session closely follows Apple’s recent announcement of its new digital ID feature, which allows users to store passport data in Wallet. Although the company promises convenience, it has been met with concern by privacy experts around the world.
Watch the Home Affairs Committee session here
Read our full story on Apple ID here.
Windscribe is back online
That didn’t take long! The Windscribe website and core services are now fully operational once again. Cloudflare has also stated that a fix has been implemented and the issue is now resolved, so any other affected services are expected to be back up and running soon.
Windscribe upgrades infrastructure
After more than a year of careful implementation and testing, Windscribe last week completed one of the largest infrastructure projects in its history. The company’s next-generation server stack, codenamed “FreshScribe,” now officially powers its entire network.
FreshScribe is a kernel-based system that replaces the previous version of Boringtun, fundamentally changing the way the service handles WireGuard connections. The update promises to eliminate connection fluctuations, increase speeds, and pave the way for a host of powerful new features.
Read the full story here
(Unrelated) Windscribe appears to suffer from an outage from Cloudflare
It looks like Windscribe VPN may be another victim of the Cloudflare outage that has been affecting hundreds of services around the world. The company website is currently inaccessible and the app cannot connect on my mobile.
TechRadar has a live blog covering the Cloudflare outage here
X to flag VPN usage, warning location “may not be accurate”
X plans to publicly display more information about users in a bid to fight online trolls, and the change has major implications for VPN users. A label warning that someone’s location “may not be accurate” will reportedly be introduced to people’s accounts if they are using a VPN.
The announcement has been met with strong criticism from both security researchers and privacy experts. The director of research at NetBlocks, for example, warned that the information could be used against journalists or activists. However, Proton VPN told TechRadar that users’ locations may be derived from their app store region rather than their IP address.
We are awaiting further comments from X to clarify the specific technical implementation.
Read the full story here
Hi, I’m Sam.
To kick off this week, I thought I’d share a couple of news stories you may have missed from last week.
Firstly, Surfshark announced a new deal with Bristol City FC. The company will become the official VPN partner of the football club. Follow ExpressVPN, which has a partnership with Tottenham Hotspur and NBA team Brooklyn Nets.
Also, check out this new video from Mullvad VPN. Called ‘And Then?’ details the company’s opposition to the EU chat control proposal. See Chiara’s report on the current state of the legislation here.
