For my final 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 good old days. The tool is available to Surfshark One and One Plus subscribers, both of which are currently on sale as part of the company’s Black Friday promotions.
See the Black Friday offer here
That’s all from us today, we’ll be back again tomorrow with more VPN news, deals and exclusive insights.
60+ organizations require encryption protection
A coalition of more than 60 organizations has signed a global declaration urging governments to protect strong encryption. Signatories include the VPN Trust Initiative, which is a consortium of many of the top VPN providers. The promise comes as various bills require more access to encrypted data, especially in the EU, where the debate around Chat Control continues to intensify.
Read the whole story here
The UK Home Affairs Committee is holding talks on digital ID
The UK Home Affairs Committee is currently taking evidence on potential new forms of digital ID. This important session provides an opportunity to hear current concerns and potential benefits surrounding government-issued digital ID. The committee will hear from experts on issues related to privacy and security risks, including the potential for mass data breaches and erosion of civil liberties.
The session follows closely on the heels of 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 concerns from privacy experts worldwide.
See the meeting of the Committee on Internal Affairs here
Read our full story on Apple ID here.
Windscribe back online
It didn’t take long! Windscribe’s website and core services are now fully operational again. Cloudflare has also stated that a fix has been implemented and the issue is now resolved, so expect all other affected services to be back up and running soon.
Windscribe updates infrastructure
After more than a year of careful implementation and testing, last week Windscribe completed one of the most significant 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 Boringtun version, fundamentally changing how the service handles WireGuard connections. The upgrade promises to eliminate connection jitter, increase speeds and pave the way for a number of powerful new features.
Read the whole story here
(Unrelated) Windscribe appears to be suffering from Cloudflare outages
It looks like Windscribe VPN may be another victim of the Cloudflare outage that has affected hundreds of services worldwide. The company website is currently unavailable and the app cannot connect on my mobile.
TechRadar has a live blog covering the Cloudflare outage here
X to mark VPN use, warning location ‘may not be accurate’
X plans to display more information about users publicly in an effort to combat online trolls, and the change has significant implications for VPN users. According to reports, a label warning that a person’s location “may not be accurate” will be introduced on people’s accounts if they use 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. But Proton VPN told TechRadar that users’ locations may be derived from their app store region rather than their IP address.
We await further comment from X to clarify the specific technical implementation.
Read the whole story here
Hi, this is Sam.
To kick off this week, I thought I’d share a few tidbits you may have missed from last week.
First, Surfshark announced a new deal with Bristol City FC. The company becomes the football club’s official VPN partner. It follows ExpressVPN, which has a partnership with Tottenham Hotspur and with the NBA team, the Brooklyn Nets.
Also check out this new video from Mullvad VPN. Called ‘And then?’ it details the company’s opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal. See Chiara’s report on where the legislation currently stands here.
