The Proton VPN Blog

Proton VPN 2025-2026 fall and winter recap

Antonio Cesarano — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 16:18:24 GMT

As promised in our fall and winter roadmap, over the last few months we’ve been focusing on delivering features to greatly improve your VPN experience, such as building a new VPN architecture and delivering a Linux CLI. We’ve also made improvements that weren’t originally on our roadmap, such as making NetShield Ad-blocker even more effective.

We’d like to share with you, the Proton community, how this work is going, and to fill you in on any updates you may have missed. We’ll also post our roadmap for spring and summer soon, so be sure to check back in and see what’s coming next.

A new VPN protocol codebase for faster, more reliable apps

We’ve been busy working on an exciting new client‑side WireGuard® codebase that unlocks the next generation of Proton VPN performance, reliability, and censorship resistance. Soon to be available for beta testing on Android and Windows, we’ve already ensured this new codebase means:

Faster and more reliable apps
Greatly improved anti-censorship capabilities
Fewer disconnects and dropouts

Power, precision, and privacy from the Linux terminal

We’ve heard from our community that command-line support matters for Linux users. You can now enjoy Proton VPN’s trusted encryption and Swiss privacy from the Linux terminal, allowing you to skip the graphical interface and launch secure connections in seconds. Our Linux CLI (command-line utility) is built for speed and reliability, providing the fastest way to protect your privacy and manage your VPN without leaving the keyboard.

Available for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and Arch, our new Linux CLI now supports a host of advanced features, such as IPv6, moderate NAT, custom DNS, a kill switch, VPN Accelerator, NetShield Ad-blocker, port forwarding, and more.

NetShield Ad-blocker is now six times more powerful

Although it wasn’t part of our original roadmap, we’ve made major improvements to NetShield Ad-blocker, our DNS filtering feature. NetShield has always been highly effective at blocking ads, malware, and tracker domains, and now it blocks six times more ads and trackers than before.

This is because NetShield now blocks subdomains in addition to root domains. For example, instead of just blocking connections to tracker.com, NetShield now also blocks connections to api.tracker.com cdn.tracker.com, pixel.tracker.com, and similar subdomains. As a result, it provides stronger protection for private, secure browsing.

Faster, simpler, more reliable

We’ve also introduced many under-the-hood improvements that make Proton VPN apps more intuitive and easy to use:

Added support for 6 new languages, bringing the total number of languages supported in all our apps (except Linux) to 35.
Added City view on Linux, iOS, iPadOS, and macOS (beta), so you can browse and connect to specific cities and states directly from the country list.
Improved split tunneling and the kill switch on Windows so you can use them together.
Improved Connection preferences on Android so you can exclude locations when you connect to Fastest.
Greatly improved startup reliability on the Android app.

Even better for business

Proton VPN for Business continues to expand its feature portfolio for teams and organizations. Over the last few months, we’ve introduced:

A new VPN + Pass plan aimed at professional users
Groups: Administrators can create user groups and customize each group’s access to Gateways and shared servers, providing granular control access to sensitive resources based on user identity.
Support for more MDM providers: Iru, FletDM, SimpleDM, and Workspace ONE.

So what’s next?

To find out more, watch out for our upcoming Proton VPN spring and summer roadmap.

Thank you for supporting our work to make privacy and freedom available to everyone. To tell us what you think about our recent improvements or to suggest new features, join our community.

IKEv2 support is ending on macOS

Douglas Crawford — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 11:34:05 GMT

To improve security and performance, we’re removing support for the IKEv2 VPN protocol from our macOS app. If you currently use IKEv2, you’ll need to switch to a modern VPN protocol before the change takes effect.

Apple’s native IKEv2 implementation on macOS has been a source of ongoing security concerns, including traffic leaks that can expose your real IP address. Powerful, sleek, and secure modern VPN protocols — such as WireGuard® and our own Stealth protocol — offer better performance and stronger privacy guarantees.

There is no longer a reason for us to continue supporting IKEv2, and we have long since stopped doing so on all our other apps.

What to use instead of IKEv2

Instead of IKEv2, you can use:

Smart Protocol (default): Let the app automatically select the best protocol for your network. This is the easiest option, and is enabled by default. Smart Protocol will intelligently switch between protocols and ports as needed.
WireGuard: A fast, lightweight, and secure protocol that is now the default on our macOS app. WireGuard offers significantly better performance than IKEv2, with the added benefit of excellent security.
Stealth: Our custom obfuscation protocol is based on WireGuard and tunneled over TLS. Stealth is designed to defeat censorship and deep packet inspection in restrictive network environments.

Learn how to change VPN protocols or select Smart Protocol

Don’t see WireGuard or Stealth as an option?

WireGuard and Stealth require the use of a macOS network extension (called system extensions on older macOS versions). If you don’t see these protocols listed in your Proton VPN app, it likely means the system isn’t enabled. This is a common issue, as macOS blocks third-party system extensions by default as a security measure, and you need to manually allow them.

Learn how to install macOS network extensions

Who is affected?

This update affects everyone using the IKEv2 protocol in the Proton VPN macOS app. If you haven’t manually changed VPN protocol, you are most likely already using WireGuard or Smart Protocol and don’t need to do anything.To check your current protocol, open the Proton VPN app and go to Settings → Connection tab → Protocol. If it shows Smart, WireGuard, WireGuard (TCP), or Stealth, you’re all set.

What do you need to do?

If your protocol is set to Smart, WireGuard, or Stealth: Nothing. You’re already using a modern protocol.
If your protocol is set to IKEv2: Switch to Smart Protocol or WireGuard in Settings → Connection → Protocol.
Check your connection profiles: If you have created custom VPN connection profiles, these may still use IKEv2 (even after you’ve updated your default protocol). Go to the Profiles tab, review each profile, and switch any that still use IKEv2 to Smart Protocol or WireGuard.

When do you need to do it?

We’ll be removing IKEv2 support from our servers starting April 2026. The entire process won’t happen overnight (final support will end in February 2027), but it will become increasing likely that your IKEv2 connection will fail April 2026 onward.

Why are we making this change?

In addition to the security concerns about Apple’s IKEv2 implementation, and the fact that modern WireGuard-based protocols offer much better performance than IKEv2, maintaining support for IKEv2 has negative consequences for all our users.

IKEv2 operates on well-known, fixed ports (UDP 500 and 4500) that are trivially easy to scan for. Countries that censor the internet (such as China, Russia, and Myanmar) actively probe these ports to detect and flag the IP addresses of our VPN servers.

Once flagged, these IP addresses are added to commercial databases (“blacklists”) used by websites, streaming services, and other online platforms to block access or serve CAPTCHAs to anyone connecting from those addresses.

This affects everyone in Proton VPN community who uses these servers, not just those using IKEv2. By closing these ports, we make our servers significantly harder to fingerprint and reduce the likelihood of our IP addresses being flagged. The result is a better browsing experience for everyone.

Removing IKEv2 from our macOS app allows us to:

Improve your security: Apple’s IKEv2 implementation has known vulnerabilities that are outside our control to fix. By moving to protocols fully managed by us, we can protect your privacy better.
Reduce complexity: Supporting fewer protocols means a leaner, more reliable app with fewer potential points of failure.
Accelerate development: A simpler codebase lets us ship new features and improvements faster.
Deliver better performance: WireGuard and Stealth are modern protocols built from the ground up to be fast and efficient, offering noticeably better speeds and lower battery drain than IKEv2.

A better, faster VPN experience

WireGuard is faster, more battery-efficient, and reconnects more quickly than IKEv2 — especially when switching between Wi-Fi and mobile networks. Combined with Smart Protocol’s automatic network probing, you’ll get the best possible connection without having to think about protocol selection at all.

If you connect to Proton VPN from a censored environment, Stealth provides robust obfuscation capabilities that IKEv2 simply does not. This change will result in a better VPN experience for all our macOS community members.

Censorship and repression: Proton VPN’s end of year report 2025

Douglas Crawford — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 17:18:30 GMT

The past year marked another challenging one for democracy and internet freedom. A notable trend was the increasing willingness of authoritarian governments to damage their own economies and the livelihoods of citizens by implementing total internet shutdowns.

Most notable, however, was the increasing threat to internet freedom in Western democracies by-and-large considered “free.” From age verification laws introduced without considering the full ramifications to social media restrictions, to DNS server blocks, access to a free and open internet is imperilled now more than ever.

As always, Proton VPN is at the forefront of this battle to protect privacy and free speech. More and more the world is relying on our services to defend themselves in this dramatic escalation the global war on internet freedom.

We’ve observed unprecedented surges in Proton VPN connections worldwide as people refuse to be silenced. As pressure mounted, citizens everywhere fought back, turning to privacy tools in record numbers to defeat censorship and reclaim their right to an open, uncensored internet. — David Peterson, Proton VPN’s General Manager.

In 2025, we observed spikes in Proton VPN signups in 62 countries. We define a spike as any sudden increase that surpasses 100% over the previous baseline. These upsurges included:

10 countries with at least one spike in signups of over 1,000%
Six countries with at least one spike in signups of over 5,000%
Four countries with at least one spike in signups of over 10,000%

In this report, we’ll analyze what made 2025 so remarkable. We’ll explore where pressures on free speech intensified and how regular people around the world pushed back. Using data from our observatory and global usage patterns, we’ll outline the forces now shaping online freedom — and what they might signal for the year ahead.

Most notable spikes and shutdowns in 2025

Spikes and shutdowns due to censorship and civil unrest

When political pressure rises, the internet is often the first casualty. Across multiple countries, governments responded to conflict and elections not with transparency, but with blackouts, throttling, and isolation from the global web. These incidents show how fragile digital access can be, and why tools that preserve connectivity matter now more than ever.

1. Iran

On June 18, as the Iran–Israel War escalated, Iran imposed a near-total internet blackout that lasted three days. The government severed international connections and blocked access to websites, social media, messaging services, and foreign VPN servers. Only Iran’s domestic intranet and government-approved services remained accessible.

Limited bandwidth returned on June 21, but networks remained heavily throttled for essential services only. Following a US-brokered ceasefire on June 24, normal (censored) internet access was restored. By June 26, Proton VPN signups surged 5,500% as Iranians looked for ways to access international news.

2. Tanzania

Tanzania’s October general election saw the two main opposition candidates barred from the ballot, sparking protests in several cities. Security forces responded with lethal force, causing many deaths and injuries, and the government shut down the internet for five days. When service resumed, VPN signups increased by 2,000%.

3. Afghanistan

On September 29, citing “immorality”, the Taliban imposed a 24‑hour total internet blackout affecting roughly 30% of the population. The shutdown came after the regime began removing women‑authored books from universities and restricting girls’ education past age 12, prompting some women to turn to online learning.

Even after the blackout ended, access to Facebook, Instagram and X remained limited. Proton VPN signups jumped a staggering 35,000% as Afghans sought ways to connect abroad. Subsequent disruptions, including a separate blackout on October 14, have kept VPN demand high.

4. Papua New Guinea

On March 25, 2025, Papua New Guinea abruptly blocked Facebook access, claiming a “test” to curb misinformation, hate speech, pornography and other harmful content during in the event of a national emergency. Critics noted the timing coincided with Prime Minister James Marape’s testimony in a corruption trial, suggesting the move aimed to suppress real‑time news coverage and commentary.

Because Facebook is a key gateway to the wider internet for many PNG residents, Proton VPN signups spiked by over 14,000 % the same day.

See more top censorship moments for 2025

Spikes due to legal and regulatory changes

Internet control doesn’t always look like a shutdown. Increasingly, it comes wrapped in regulation. New laws that expand age verification and identity requirements can create pressure to hand over sensitive personal data just to access legal content. When trust in data handling erodes, users look for alternatives.

1. United Kingdom

The UK’s controversial Online Safety Act, which introduced new age-verification requiring all user generated content sites to verify the age of their users, came into force on July 25. In practice, this meant adults were increasingly asked to prove their identity, often by uploading government-issued ID or submitting biometric data, to access legal content.

Many people were reluctant to comply, especially in light of a number of high-profile data breaches that hit the headlines at around the same time. The Tea app data breach exposed particularly sensitive user information: 72,000 images, including 13,000 verification photos and images of government IDs, and was followed by further such incidents, including data leaks involving Discord and Mixpanel.

Together, these events reinforced fears about how personal data is collected, stored, and protected by online services, and resulted in a notable 1200% increase in Proton VPN signups.

2. Spain

La Liga (Spain’s top soccer league) wanted to crack down on illegal streaming of matches. To do this, it obtained a court order allowing them to block IP addresses associated with piracy, which it promptly required multiple ISPs to do.

However, many of the blocked IP addresses belonged to Cloudflare, a global infrastructure provider. And because Cloudflare uses shared IP addresses, millions of legitimate websites share the same IP addresses as pirate sites. The result? Widespread over-blocking of millions of legitimate websites.

This remains an ongoing situation, resulting in consistent Proton VPN signup spikes throughout the year, notably in February (+110%) and October (+200%). Of particular note is that VPN usage surges occurred whenever the blocks were put in place, not just during matches. This strongly suggests that Spaniards are turning to VPNs simply to access the legitimate websites they usually frequent.

3. USA

In 2024, framing the measure as protection against “foreign adversary–controlled applications”, Congress passed legislation requiring TikTok to divest its US operations or face removal from app stores and US internet infrastructure.

On January 19, 2025, the TikTok app briefly stopped working for US users, and the app was removed from the Apple and Google app stores. The video editing tool, CapCut (developed by TikTok’s owners), also went down. During this time, we recorded a 520% increase in Proton VPN signups.

Within hours, however, the incoming Trump administration signed an executive order delaying enforcement, giving TikTok extra time to find a buyer and effectively pausing the ban multiple times through 2025.

Timeline of spikes

Signup spikes by region

Political instability in many sub-Saharan African countries, including Tanzania, Togo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan resulted in a notable increase in total internet shutdowns and Proton VPN signup spikes across the region.

Last year also saw a sizable increase in signups from Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern countries such as Türkiye, Myanmar, Cambodia, Iran, and Papua New Guinea, in response to social media restrictions (often implemented in response to civil unrest or with the aim of preventing it).

Perhaps the most interesting new development, though, was the number of spikes we witnessed in Western democracies such as the UK, US, Spain and France.

Proton VPN is at the forefront of the battle against censorship

Proton VPN provides key tools and services that allow people to access the free and open internet, no matter where they are. These include:

100% free VPN service with no data limits: Ensuring our service is available to those who need it the most is central to Proton’s mission.
Alternative routing: If our software cannot connect directly to our servers, it routes your connection through third-party services (such as AWS) that are unlikely to be blocked.
Stealth: Our WireGuard®-based obfuscated and DPI resistant VPN protocol is effective at defeating many forms of online censorship.
Smart protocol: When the default VPN protocol is blocked, our apps automatically switch to different VPN protocols and ports to evade the block.
Available from multiple sources: When access to our website is blocked, Proton VPN can be downloaded from third party sources such as Apple App Store, Google Play, Amazon app store and F-Droid. It’s available as an APK, and all our open source apps are available to compile and download from GitHub.

Of course, Proton VPN is always working on new ways to improve our anti-censorship capabilities. In 2025 we added:

Guest mode on iOS

This popular feature for Android is now available for iPhones. Just install the app and tap the Continue as guest button to defeat censorship and protect your privacy online.

More free server locations

We’ve expanded our selection of free server locations to 10 countries. You can now connect to free servers for the Netherlands, Japan, Romania, Poland, Norway, Switzerland, Singapore, Mexico, Canada, and the United States.

More server locations

We’ve also expanded the total number of server locations you can connect to with a paid Proton VPN plan. You can now defeat government efforts to censor international connections and access local content by connecting to 17,000+ VPN servers for 127 countries. Locations added in 2025 include Panama, Armenia, Mongolia, Laos, Brunei, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Cameroon, Guatemala, and Honduras.

More ways to buy Proton VPN

In addition to our long-standing support for direct payments via cash and Bitcoin, it is now possible to purchase paid Proton VPN plans using Monero, Litecoin, Ethereum, and more via partners.

Whatever 2026 brings, Proton VPN is ready

The trends that emerged in 2025 show no sign of slowing in 2026. Governments around the world are increasingly willing to restrict internet access as a first response to political pressure, civil unrest, or regulatory ambition. In authoritarian states, this has meant more frequent and more severe shutdowns, even at significant economic cost.

In democracies, the threat is subtler but no less real. Poorly designed laws, blunt enforcement tools, and private-sector compliance mechanisms are fragmenting access to the open internet in ways that were once considered unthinkable.

At the same time, 2025 made one thing clear: people adapt quickly. Whether facing total blackouts, social media bans, mandatory ID checks, or indiscriminate blocking of infrastructure providers, millions turned to Proton VPN not to break the law, but to stay informed, communicate freely, and access the services they rely on.

The growing number of large signup spikes in democratic countries suggests that circumvention tools are no longer used only at the margins of society. They are becoming a mainstream response to overreach, censorship, and loss of trust in how online access is governed.

As we move into 2026, the struggle over internet freedom is likely to intensify. More governments will test the limits of control, and more people will look for ways around it. Proton VPN will continue to invest in free access, stronger anti-censorship technology, and wider global availability, so that wherever restrictions appear, people have a reliable way to stay connected to the open internet. For example, we’re currently working on:

A new VPN codebase: Will deliver best-in-class anti-censorship capabilities, enable Stealth support on Linux, power the next generation of Stealth, and lay the groundwork for post-quantum encryption.
An improved Linux CLI: Our Linux command-line tool allows anyone to access the open internet using only the most basic hardware. We recently added a host of advanced configuration options, and will expand on these through 2026.

As we head into 2026, the 2025 data underscores a powerful truth: whenever censorship tightens its grip, from internet shutdowns to app blocks, people fight back by turning to VPNs in unprecedented numbers to protect their voices and access uncensored information. We remain deeply committed to this battle; our team will keep working tirelessly to innovate, roll out new anti-censorship features, and strengthen our tools so that users worldwide can defeat restrictions and reclaim their online freedom. Thanks to Proton VPN community, we will ensure privacy and an open internet prevail. — David Peterson.

Whatever challenges 2026 brings, the message from 2025 is clear: when internet access is threatened, people push back. And Proton VPN will be there to support them.

Is your iPhone tracking you? How to check iPhone location history

Douglas Crawford — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 11:28:48 GMT

Your iPhone has a feature called Significant Locations, which is designed to help Siri and Maps learn your routines so they can provide better, more personalized suggestions. For example, to remind you to leave for work when traffic is bad, or to suggest a restaurant near your gym.

Although Significant Locations does keep a surprisingly detailed log of where you’ve been, when, and how often, Apple has gone to admirable lengths to minimize its threat to your privacy.

Arguably, a bigger threat comes from third-party apps like the almost ubiquitous Google Maps, which have detailed access to your location history and are much less picky about who they share it with.

What is Significant Locations and how does it work?

Significant Locations is an iPhone feature that keeps a record of places you visit often to personalize services like maps, photos, and suggestions. Unlike Google Maps, Significant Locations is not a full GPS history log. Instead, it collects periodic location signals using geolocation indicators such as GPS, WiFi, cell tower, and Bluetooth connections. Over time, it detects patterns such as:

How often you visit a location
How long you stay of there
How recently you last visited

Once it identifies these patterns, it stores the locations locally on your device. So a coffee shop you visit daily will be stored, but not a one-time road trip.

This information is used by Maps to predict routing due to traffic, make location-based suggestions in Calendar, group Memories in Photos, create location-based alerts and Siri suggestions, and more.

How secure is Significant Locations?

Significant Locations data is stored locally on your device. The feature is enabled by default but only works if Location Services are turned on and your phone is secured using a passcode or biometric lock.

If Sync to iCloud is enabled, your data will also be stored on Apple servers. However, Apple says that Significant Locations data is end-to-end encrypted (E2EE), with the encryption keys derived from your device passcode.

This means your Significant Locations data is not accessible to Apple, even if it’s synced to iCloud and Advanced Data Protection (optional E2EE for iCloud) is not enabled. Metadata may still exist, however, and since iOS is closed-source, we just have to take Apple’s word on this.

Anyone with physical access to your unlocked phone can view your Significant Locations. Depending on your recovery methods, anyone with full control of your Apple ID and one of your trusted devices can access that data too.

How to check your iPhone location history (Significant Locations data)

On your iPhone or iPad, open the Settings app and go to Privacy & Security → Location Services → System services → Significant Locations & Routes. From here, you can view your Significant Locations records.

How to delete your iPhone location history (Significant Locations)

1. On your iPhone or iPad, open the Settings app.

Go to Privacy & Security → Location Services → System services → Significant Locations & Routes.
Toggle the Significant Locations & Routes switch off.

Beware location tracking by apps

Many of the apps you install on iOS can track your location, but they must go through a permission system and the system location APIs controlled by Apple. These limit the amount of direct geolocation data that an app can access, but apps can use a number of indirect methods.

How iOS handles location permissions

Apple’s iOS uses a permission-based model that requires your explicit consent before any app can access your location data. When an app requests location access, you are presented with several options:

Allow Once: Grants access for a single session.
Allow While Using App: The app can access location only when it is actively open or in the foreground.
Allow Always: The app can access location even in the background (requires justification).
Don’t Allow: Denies access entirely.

Crucially, for Allow Always permissions, iOS requires the app developer to provide a reason for background access. You’ll also occasionally be reminded of this permission by a system prompt asking if you want to keep it enabled.

When the app is actively accessing your location data, you’ll see a blue location indicator icon in your notification bar (a gray icon indicates that your location was recently accessed by an app).

To see how often an app has accessed your location data, you can view its App Privacy Report if you’ve turned this feature on. To do this:

Open the Settings app.
Go to Privacy & Security → App Privacy Report (under Transparency Logs).
Tap Turn On App Privacy Report.

Once enabled, go to App Privacy Report whenever you want to check how often apps access your location and other sensitive data.

Approximate vs precise location on iPhone

By default, apps that request location permissions use your Precise Location. This uses various sensors on your iPhone to accurately locate you within a few meters. However, since iOS 14, you can disable Precise Location for each app that requests it, forcing them to use your approximate location instead (to roughly within a few kilometers).

To disable Precise Location, tap Precise: On when an app first asks for location permissions (see screenshot above). Or open the Settings app, go to Privacy & Security → Location Services, select the app, and toggle the Precise Location switch off. You can also change when an app can request location data from this screen.

Geofencing

Apps register geofences using Apple’s location APIs. When a user enters or leaves these areas, the app can trigger actions. This is often used for reminders or location-based services such as retail apps triggering store notifications, and smart-home apps triggering automations.

Geofencing lets apps collect some background location data, even when restricted to Allow While Using App permissions. The only way to prevent it is to Never allow location access for the app.

Passive location inference

Even without explicit GPS access, apps may infer your location using things like your IP address, nearby WiFi networks, Bluetooth beacons, and metadata from photos. Although these techniques typically provide less precise location data than full GPS access, they can still reveal your location to around the city or even neighborhood level.

And once apps have this information, they can use it themselves to target you with personalized ads and/or sell it to data brokers and analytics platforms.

Your best defense against such techniques is to use a VPN to hide your real IP address, and DNS filtering (such as Proton VPN’s NetShield Ad-blocker feature) to block tracker scripts.

Individual apps and services may also offer their own ways to view and delete location history they’ve collected about you. For example, you can delete Google Maps search history or turn off Instagram location sharing using in-app settings.

Final thoughts on iPhone location tracking

Apple’s Significant Locations feature shows how location history can be used in a relatively privacy-conscious way. Its data is stored locally (or end-to-end encrypted if synced with iCloud), and it is designed primarily to improve useful built-in services like Siri and Maps, rather than to build a detailed profile of your movements for advertising purposes. However, Significant Locations can still provide a surprisingly detailed record of places you visit regularly, so checking and clearing its data from time to time may be a sensible precaution.

In practice, the bigger privacy risk often comes from the apps you install. Many third-party apps request location access and may collect, store, and share that information with advertisers, analytics companies, or data brokers. Even when iOS limits direct GPS access, apps can sometimes infer your location through other signals.

The best way to stay in control of your location data is to regularly review your location permissions, disable Precise Location for apps that don’t truly need it, and remove access entirely where possible. Combined with tools like VPNs and tracker blocking, these steps can help reduce how much of your movement history ends up in the hands of companies you didn’t intend to share it with.

Less than half of SMBs use a VPN. Here’s what our research found.

Ben Wolford — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 10:54:54 GMT

For most small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the “office” is now a collection of home WiFi networks, coffee shop hotspots, shared workspaces, and cloud-based SaaS tools.

Yet even as work continues to become more distributed, many businesses have failed to put network controls in place. Fewer than half of SMBs use a VPN to protect access to their network, according to new research by Proton.

At the same time, security incidents are rising. One in four SMBs have experienced a cyberattack or breach in the past year.

So why, despite a seemingly permanent shift to hybrid work, is VPN adoption so inconsistent? And is that the cause of so many recent security incidents?

Our SMB Cybersecurity Report 2026 sheds light on this question. For our exclusive research, we surveyed thousands of business leaders around the world dozens of questions about their security practices. You can download the free cybersecurity report to gain four key insights and five recommendations for your business.

Download the free report

Why attackers are targeting SMBs

For years, cybercriminals focused primarily on large corporations. But as enterprise defenses have improved, attackers have increasingly targeted SMBs due to:

Limited resources: Small teams often lack dedicated security staff and formal security policies.

Distributed networks: Employees connect from home WiFi, shared workspaces, and public hotspots, creating more entry points for attackers.

High-value data: SMBs might store the same sensitive data as large enterprises — including customer information, financial records, and intellectual property — but with fewer protections in place.

The adoption gap: SMBs are neglecting VPNs

The Proton SMB Cybersecurity Report 2026 exposed two gaps among small and medium businesses:

Adoption gap: Less than half of SMBs use a VPN to secure their endpoints.
Execution gap: Even among VPN adopters, security practices are inconsistent.

Let’s start with the adoption gap.

The rise of software-as-a-service has created a false sense of security among small businesses. While most SaaS platforms use strong encryption (i.e., TLS) to protect traffic in transit, and some like Proton Mail or Proton Drive also use end-to-end encryption at rest, they don’t secure the path your employees take to log in.

For example, your organization might use an encrypted email service to protect the content of your messages, but without a VPN you can’t enforce IP-based restrictions to control who can log in to the platform. So an attacker with a set of leaked credentials could log in and breach your network.

While the shift to hybrid work is global, the accompanying security adaptations have been uneven. The United States is the only country in our study where a majority of SMBs use a VPN. In every other market, adoption sits below 50%. This gap is even more pronounced outside the tech sector, where security hasn’t kept pace with the shift to hybrid work.

The execution gap: True security goes beyond a VPN

Fifty-two percent of VPN-using SMBs say they are very or completely confident in their ability to withstand attacks. But our data shows that even among this group, 26% experienced a breach in the past 12 months. If a business is already securing its network, how is this still happening?

The issue is not the VPN itself, but the surrounding controls and the prevalence of human error. Only 56% of VPN adopters in our study enforce two-factor authentication (2FA). When nearly half of businesses rely on passwords alone, the risk is compounded by poor credential discipline. Instead of consistently using a business password manager:

31.5% still share credentials via email
33.4% via shared documents
28% rely on messaging apps to share logins
24.6% still write passwords down

Our data suggests that many businesses are treating security as a piecemeal investment in isolated products rather than a cohesive system, without consistently executed security policies in place.

Security as infrastructure, not afterthought

The study revealed another valuable insight: Security is a revenue driver.

In our report, 66% of businesses say demonstrating secure data handling is “very” or “critically” important to winning new business. A VPN for endpoint security gives you the infrastructure and visibility to make that case to prospective clients.

Without a defined network perimeter, entry points multiply, visibility diminishes, and access control is scattered across third-party platforms. All this expands the attack surface and makes it harder to detect suspicious behavior, contain incidents, or demonstrate control to customers and partners. A VPN restores the boundary, and establishes a controllable perimeter around employees wherever they work.

Here’s how you can apply the lesson in your business:

Restrict access by IP or location: Only allow access to internal tools from approved devices or networks.
Have full network visibility: When logins are only allowed from your VPN, you can monitor traffic to your resources and spot potential attacks.
Enforce consistent policies: Apply security rules on your network, rather than relying on third-party promises.

Without a VPN, remote traffic moves across public networks without centralized control, increasing exposure. True security requires the network layer and the identity layer to operate as a single, reinforced system.

Download the full 2026 SMB Cybersecurity Report

Proton’s SMB Cybersecurity Report 2026 examines where security confidence breaks down, why foundational controls are missing, and how hybrid work has reshaped the attack surface for growing businesses.

Inside the report, you’ll find:

Global breach patterns and human-error trends
The financial impact of modern data breaches
Cloud and AI trust gaps among business leaders
Practical steps for building layered security systems

Download the free report

What is a CDN and how does it work?

Douglas Crawford — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:23:20 GMT

A content delivery network (CDN) is a geographically distributed network of servers that work together to deliver internet content faster and more reliably. Instead of all users accessing content from a single origin server, CDNs cache copies of static assets like images, videos, stylesheets, and JavaScript files on servers located closer to users around the globe.

Think of it like a retail chain. Instead of everyone traveling to one massive warehouse headquarters to buy products, there are local stores in every city stocked with popular items. You get what you need faster, and the central warehouse handles less traffic.

Some 46 million websites use CDNs worldwide, including around 81% of the top 1 million websites. Major CDN providers include Akamai Technologies and the almost ubiquitous Cloudflare (over 24 million websites use Cloudflare alone).

Why do CDNs exist?
What are the benefits of CDNs?
How do CDNs work?
CDNs and the dangers of overblocking

Why do CDNs exist?

Traditionally, websites were hosted on a single server in one physical location. Which works fine if all your visitors live near that server. But once users are spread across countries (or continents), problems appear:

Latency (slow loading times due to physical distance)
Bandwidth bottlenecks
Server overload during traffic spikes
Higher vulnerability to DDoS attacks

CDNs solve this by distributing content across many servers worldwide. This means if you’re in New York, you’ll get content from a US-based sever, while visitors from London to the same website will get be served content from a European sever.

What are the benefits of CDNs?

CDNs improve:

Speed: Content travels a shorter physical distance
Scalability: Traffic spikes (e.g., during sales or viral events) don’t crash the site
Uptime: If one server fails, another takes over
Security: Most CDNs help protect against DDoS attacks

How do CDNs work?

A CDN consists of:

An origin server. This is the “main” server where the website actually lives.
Edge servers that store (“cache”) static content like images, CSS files, JavaScript, and videos from the origin server. Large CDNs (like Cloudflare) may run hundreds of these distributed edge servers all over the world.

When you visit a website that uses a CDN, the process works as follows:

User request: When you visit a website, your browser sends a request for content.
DNS resolution: The CDN’s DNS system determines which server is best positioned to serve you. Typically, this will be the one closest to you.
Cache check: The edge server checks if it has the requested content cached.
Delivery: If cached, the content is delivered immediately. If not, the edge server fetches it from the origin server, caches a copy for future requests, and delivers it to you.
Dynamic content: For dynamic content (like personalized pages), CDNs can route requests to the origin server while still optimizing the connection path.

Crucially, all websites that use the same CDN will route their content though the CDN’s shared edge servers. This means hundreds of otherwise unrelated websites serving a similar geographic area may share the IP address of a CDN edge server for that area.

CDNs and the dangers of overblocking

To combat illegal streaming of its football matches, top Spanish football association LaLiga has obtained court orders requiring Spanish internet service providers to block thousands of IP addresses belonging to CDN provider Cloudflare. This is because it has connected these IP addresses to illegal streaming services.

The problem is these IP addresses belong to Cloudflare’s edge servers, which are also used by thousands (potentially millions) of legitimate websites. This has left millions of people in Spain unable to reliably access some popular sites, including GitHub, ChatGPT, government websites, and banking services.

Final thoughts on CDNs

Content delivery networks are now essential infrastructure for today’s web, quietly powering the fast, reliable online experience that you’ve come to expect. By distributing content across geographically dispersed edge servers, CDNs reduce latency, absorb traffic spikes, improve uptime, and add critical layers of security.

Much of their utility lies in their invisibility. Although used by over three-quarters of all websites on the internet, most of us never even think about them. But they’re there, working behind the scenes on roughly three-quarters of today’s websites, ensuring that content arrives quickly and reliably regardless of geography.

Recent situations where governments, courts and corporate interests have blocked internet services inevitably do significant collateral damage to the wider internet.

Surveillance pricing: How your data determines what you pay

Douglas Crawford — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:34:51 GMT

Surveillance pricing, also known as personalized or algorithmic pricing, is a practice where companies use your personal data, such as your location, the device you’re using, your browsing history, and even your income, to determine what price to show you. It’s not just about supply and demand — it’s about you as a consumer and how much the system thinks you’re able (or willing) to pay.

Have you ever shopped online for a flight, only to find that the price mysteriously increased the second time you checked? Or have you and a friend searched for the same hotel room on your phones, only to find your friend sees a lower price? This isn’t a glitch — it’s surveillance pricing at work.

In the United States, surveillance pricing is becoming increasingly prevalent across various industries, including airlines, hotels, and e-commerce platforms. It exists elsewhere, but in other parts of the world, such as the European Union, there is a growing recognition of the danger this pricing model presents to citizens’ privacy, resulting in stricter data protection laws aimed at curbing it. The US appears to be moving in the opposite direction.

In this article we’ll look at:

What is surveillance pricing?
How does surveillance pricing work?
Which companies use surveillance pricing?
Is surveillance pricing legal in the US?
Surveillance pricing around the world
How to avoid surveillance pricing
A deeply unfair practice

What is surveillance pricing?

At its core, surveillance pricing is the practice of adjusting prices based on the personal data collected from an individual. Unlike traditional dynamic pricing, which changes prices based on time, demand, or supply, surveillance pricing uses who you are and how you behave online to determine the price you see.

Companies gather data from a wide range of sources to build a profile of each customer. This data can include:

Your location: Are you shopping from a wealthy ZIP/postal code (which can also lead to racial discrimination)?
Device type: Are you using an iPhone or an older Android?
Browsing history: Have you looked at this item multiple times?
Purchase behavior: Are you a repeat buyer? Do you often choose premium options?
Login status: Have you signed in to a loyalty program or rewards account?

These details feed into algorithms that can predict your price sensitivity — essentially, how much they think you’re willing to pay. If the system believes you’re less likely to comparison shop or more likely to pay full price, it might show you a higher price than someone else sees for the same product or service.

What makes surveillance pricing controversial isn’t just the price difference — it’s that you usually don’t know it’s happening. There’s rarely any disclosure or obvious way to compare your price with what others see. This lack of transparency makes surveillance pricing fundamentally different from things like coupons, sales, or even “traditional” dynamic pricing.

How does surveillance pricing work?

The goal of surveillance pricing is to find the maximum price you’ll tolerate before walking away. This is a concept known in economics as first-degree price discrimination. It uses advanced data analytics and algorithms to dynamically adjust prices based on your individual data. It uses your data to profile you and adjusts the prices you see in real time based on this profile.

Surveillance pricing is only possible if the merchant has your data. This is gathered via multiple channels, including:

Cookies and device and browser fingerprinting
Mobile apps that access location or device data
Loyalty cards and programs that log your past purchases
Social media activity
Search behavior (especially when you’re logged into accounts). For example, if you sign in to Amazon and browse a particular product multiple times without buying, Amazon might infer high interest and raise the price slightly the next time you look for it.

Which companies use surveillance pricing?

The following examples show how companies leverage your personal data to adjust pricing dynamically:

Target agreed to pay $5 million in civil penalties after its app was found to increase prices for people based on their location. For example, it charged $100 more for TVs if someone was in the Target parking lot because the closer they were to the store, the more likely they were to pay.
Amazon’s pricing algorithms change its prices over 2.5 million times a day based on various factors, including demand and user behavior.
Staples charged customers different prices on its website based on estimations about their location — charging people more when they were in areas with fewer competitors
Uber has admitted other effects that “land-use/neighborhood patterns, trip purposes, time of day, and other effects” go into pricing, while Lyft said, “there are many factors that go into pricing time of day, trip purposes, and more”. Uber has been accused of increasing fares for users with low battery on their phones on the assumption they will pay more.
The travel booking site Orbitz directed Mac users toward more expensive hotel options based on data indicating that Mac users tend to spend more on accommodation.

Is surveillance pricing legal in the US?

In the United States, surveillance pricing is widespread and largely unregulated. Unlike in the European Union, where privacy laws such as the GDPR limit how companies can use personal data, the US lacks any federal legislation that directly addresses personalized pricing practices.

This regulatory gap allows businesses to collect and exploit consumer data with minimal oversight as long as they avoid overtly deceptive or discriminatory practices that violate existing consumer protection or civil rights laws. In 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced interest in enacting new regulations to tackle the issue, and in the last days of the Biden administration, it released a report and published a blog post advocating for concrete regulatory action over surveillance pricing.

However, the Trump administration has made it clear that it has little interest in this digital protection for consumers. In response, California, Georgia, Illinois, Colorado, and New York have introduced state-level legislation to curb surveillance pricing.

Although facing stiff opposition from tech industry groups such as TechNet, these bills, particularly the California bill, may have a wide-ranging impact. Passed by the California Assembly on May 12, 2025, Assembly Bill 446 could become a national standard, similar to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA21`). As the bill’s author, San Diego Assemblyman Christopher Ward, noted:

“I believe that [surveillance pricing] is predatory, it’s discriminatory, and it violates a public trust when consumers are already stretched thin and don’t deserve to be unwittingly exploited”.

Surveillance pricing around the world

Although largely unregulated in the US, other countries have taken a more muscular approach to protecting consumer data and limiting how it can be used for algorithmic pricing. `

European Union

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is among the strictest privacy laws in the world. It doesn’t directly ban personalized pricing, but it places serious limits on how companies can collect and use personal data, especially for automated decision-making. Key GDPR protections relevant to surveillance pricing include:

Right to be informed: Companies must be transparent about what data they collect and how it’s used.
Right to object: Consumers can object to profiling and automated decision-making.
Explicit consent: Companies must often obtain clear consent before using personal data for pricing decisions.

In practice, European companies are more cautious about using surveillance pricing — especially when tied to sensitive characteristics like race, income, or location. Following official guidance, they must include clear disclaimers when offering dynamic or algorithmic pricing or use standardized pricing.

United Kingdom

While no longer part of the EU, the UK GDPR remains broadly aligned with the GDPR. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has also expressed concern about algorithmic harms, including discriminatory pricing, and has promised to work with the ICO and Ofcom to help address these concerns.

Canada

Canada’s Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA), part of its proposed Digital Charter, aims to improve transparency and give consumers more control over their data. While it’s still in development, this reflects a growing awareness of how behavioral targeting (including pricing) is bad for consumers.

More generally, across the globe, there’s a growing trend toward algorithmic accountability, consumer education on digital pricing, and creating legal frameworks that limit abusive use of data. However, enforcement remains inconsistent, and the citizens of many countries remain vulnerable to opaque and exploitative surveillance pricing practices.

How to avoid surveillance pricing

It’s difficult to detect or avoid surveillance pricing entirely, especially if you use mobile apps that can access a huge amount of your personal data. However, there are some things you can do to reduce how much companies know about you.

1. Use a browser, not an app

Mobile apps typically collect a huge amount of personal data about you, which they send directly to their developers. Browsers (including mobile browsers) do not send anywhere near as much data to the websites you visit and may include privacy features such as tracking protection and fingerprinting resistance.

Learn about the best browsers for your privacy

2. Block third-party cookies

Third-party cookies are small text files stored on your browser that exist almost entirely to track your behavior across different websites. Blocking them in your browser deprives companies of some of the data they use for surveillance pricing.

Learn how to block third-party cookies on all browsers

3. Use a VPN

A VPN hides the single most revealing thing about you to app developers and websites — your IP address. It also stops your ISP from knowing what you do online and selling that data to companies that use surveillance pricing. With a paid Proton VPN account, our NetShield Ad-blocker DNS filtering feature will protect you against a range of tracker scripts.

Get Proton VPN Plus

4. Compare prices across devices and browsers

When researching goods and services, try to perform multiple searches on different devices and browsers to see if there is any change in price.

Final thoughts: A deeply unfair practice

Surveillance pricing is not science fiction. It’s here and embedded in the everyday experiences of online shopping, ride-hailing, and even education services. By quietly collecting and analyzing vast amounts of consumer data, companies can invisibly adjust prices based on who you are, where you are, what device you use, and how likely you are to pay.

Companies often claim this practice is nothing more than harmless personalization. But it furthers discrimination, exploitation, and inequity, especially when pricing is influenced by sensitive traits like race, income level, or where you live.

Ultimately, only legislators have the power necessary to reign in the rampant abuses of surveillance pricing. That’s why it’s unfortunate the FTC has abandoned its work on surveillance pricing, leaving it to individual states to pick up the pieces. Consumers elsewhere may be luckier.

That said, by avoiding apps and using a VPN, you can help limit the data companies collect to profile you for surveillance pricing.

Top 10: The biggest internet censorship moments in 2025

Douglas Crawford — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 16:50:19 GMT

As huge news stories break across the world this year, the need for VPNs has become even clearer.

When people feel threatened, they want to know what is going on, and they turn to the internet. When governments prevent them from doing this — as is sadly far too common — they turn to VPNs to bypass censorship.

As one of the world’s most popular VPN services, Proton has unique insight into world events as they are happening. Here’s what we’ve already seen this year in 2026:

In Iran, the government has imposed a complete internet shutdown as mass protests convulse the country. Personal accounts trickling out suggest that Tehran is waging a brutal crackdown. Before the blackout, Proton recorded a 1,000% increase in VPN sign-ups.
In Venezuela, after the US military launched strikes and captured President Nicolás Maduro on January 3, Proton recorded a 770% jump in VPN sign-ups from people inside that country.
In Uganda, days before a national election in which the president is seeking a seventh term, the government blocked all internet access to prevent opposition. Proton VPN recorded a 3,000% increase in VPN sign-ups after access was restored following election day (although social media platforms remain blocked).
In Egypt, social media users have reported that Discord, a popular communication platform, has been blocked by several internet service providers. Discord users said they have encountered connection failures and “stuck on loading” screens, which are signs of a government-level block, but there has been no government confirmation of a shutdown. Proton recorded a 320% increase in VPN sign-ups above normal levels.

At Proton, we publicly document the most striking VPN trends around the world in our Proton VPN Observatory. As we continue to chart this year’s news events, we wanted to use this article to unpack the top 10 internet censorship moments of 2025.

1. Iran

June 13 marked escalating hostilities between Iran and Israel, as exchanges of strikes and counter-strikes intensified across the region in what is now known as the Iran–Israel (or Twelve Days) War. Defending the action as necessary for national security during wartime conditions, the Iranian government implemented a near-total internet blackout starting June 18.

For most people, access to international websites, social media, messaging services, and VPN servers (including ours) vanished. This wasn’t simply a throttling or slowdown; the government’s actions effectively severed all international connections. Only limited access to Iran’s National Information Network (a domestic intranet) and government-approved local services continued.

Starting on the morning of the 21st, limited bandwidth returned, but the network remained heavily throttled so that only essential services like banking and government portals were reachable.

VPN traffic stayed at a fraction of pre‑blackout levels until normal (that is, heavily censored) internet access was restored to the country after, under US pressure, Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire on June 24. By June 26, Proton VPN sign-ups had jumped 5,500% as Iranians desperate for international news downloaded our apps.

2. Tanzania

Tanzania held a general election on October 29, where the two main opposition candidates (effectively the only credible challengers to the incumbent ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party) were barred from the ballot.

Protests erupted in several cities (during which security forces used lethal force that resulted in numerous deaths and injuries), prompting a surge in VPN use as Tanzanian citizens bypassed government attempts to censor internet and social media access.

In a dramatic display of what increasingly seems to be the new normal, the government responded by completely shutting down the internet for five days. As internet access was restored, VPN sign-ups spiked at 2,000%.

3. Afghanistan

Citing concerns about “immorality,” the Taliban, Afghanistan’s de facto government, on September 29 implemented a 24-hour total internet blackout that affected around 30% of the population.

This move followed a Taliban campaign to remove books written by women from the country’s university teaching system and to restrict women and girls from getting an education beyond the age of 12. In response to this, some women had turned to online learning.

After the blackout was lifted, access to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and X continued to be restricted across various parts of the country. During this period, Proton VPN saw sign-ups soar by a staggering 35,000% as Afghan citizens sought to contact the outside world.

Disruptions continued throughout October and beyond (including another total internet blackout on October 14), and Proton VPN continues to see high levels of sign-ups from the country.

4. Papua New Guinea

On March 25, 2025, the Papua New Guinea government abruptly shut down access to Facebook as part of a “test” of its capacity to curb misinformation, hate speech, pornography, and other harmful content during a national emergency.

However, the shutdown also coincided with a corruption trial for which Prime Minister James Marape was giving evidence in court. Critics and opposition members pointed to this timing as evidence that the shutdown was intended to suppress real-time commentary on the Prime Minister’s testimony.

Facebook is a primary way many PNG residents stay connected to the broader internet, so the abrupt loss of the service prompted a surge in Proton VPN sign-ups (over 14,000%) on March 25.

5. Togo

In the wake of extensive constitutional changes in 2024, reforms that removed presidential term limits were introduced in June 2025, effectively allowing President Faure Gnassingbé to stay in power indefinitely. This move was widely seen as entrenching the power of Togo’s political elites. Spring and early summer were marked by the death of at least seven anti-government protesters, numerous political arrests, and a three-month suspension of French broadcasters RFI and France 24.

Grassroots opposition coalesced in the youth-led June 6 Movement, and amid increased calls for civic disobedience, violent clashes broke out between protesters and security forces in several parts of Togo’s capital, Lomé, on June 26. This date coincides with a 12,000% jump in Proton VPN sign-ups from Togolese citizens desperate for objective reports about the situation.

These protests were met with strong repression by security forces, leading to deaths, injuries, and numerous arrests. The government also issued arrest warrants for movement leaders, including artists and activists, accusing them of attempting to destabilize the country.

Activists have continued to agitate against the government. The response has been heavy-handed, and VPN sign-ups from Togo remain high.

6. Nepal

On September 4, Nepal’s government blocked access to 26 major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, X, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Discord, Signal, and Pinterest. The move followed a Supreme Court and Cabinet directive requiring all platforms operating in Nepal to register locally, appoint local compliance and grievance officers, and meet regulatory conditions.

The restrictions triggered widespread outrage, especially among young people and digital natives who rely on these platforms for communication, work, business, education, and community events. Demonstrations (quickly dubbed the “Gen Z protests”) drew tens of thousands of participants.

These protests culminated in Kathmandu on September 8, when security forces used lethal force to disperse the crowds, resulting in at least 19 dead and hundreds injured. With violence spreading across the capital and other cities, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli announced his resignation on September 9, and the social media ban was lifted on September 10.

Starting on September 4 and remaining high throughout the period of unrest, the Proton VPN Observatory recorded an 8,000% increase in sign-ups from the country.

7. Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo is suffering from a severe humanitarian crisis, and by February 2025 an estimated 7.8 million people were internally displaced, with widespread disruption to housing, food security, water and health services. This crisis is driven by an ongoing civil war between the Congolese government and the Rwandan-backed rebel paramilitary group, M23.

In February, not long after protests and riots in Kinshasa over the government’s handling of the security situation and perceived international inaction on rebel advances, M23 conducted large-scale operations in the eastern provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, and were targeted by a rally bombing in Bukavu that resulted in multiple fatalities and dozens of injuries.

Amid this febrile and unstable situation, users across several Congolese cities started to report difficulties accessing popular social media services like TikTok and X. There was no clear official explanation for these disruptions, and government regulators at the time could not definitively say whether the block was accidental or intentional.

However, the fact that Google Play Store access was blocked (in a country where almost all internet access is via mobile phones and few can afford Apple products), strongly suggests the move was deliberate.

We saw a 7,000% rise in Proton VPN sign-ups from DR Congo in February, as many Congolese citizens turned to VPNs to access blocked services. This shows that many people found alternative ways to access our service outside of the Play Store (such as by downloading our app as an APK). Over February, services slowly returned to normal.

8. South Sudan

Since 2020, South Sudan has been ruled by a “unity government”, with President Salva Kiir sharing power with former rebel leader Riek Machar as First Vice‑President. This arrangement remains very fragile, and in early 2025, repeated delays of core reforms resulted in a resurgence of armed clashes between government forces and ex-rebel militias.

This dangerous situation was exacerbated by a large influx of refugees fleeing war in neighboring Sudan, during which graphic images of killings of South Sudanese citizens in Sudan were widely distributed on social media.

Starting at midnight on 22 January  amid a humanitarian crisis that affected some 7.5 million facing acute food insecurity, an economy still reeling from the loss of oil‑export revenues after the Sudan conflict disrupted the main pipeline, and increased pressure from both humanitarian and opposition groups, the government ordered a 30-90-day block on major social media platforms such as Facebook and TikTok.

It claimed this was in response to graphic content linked to violence, but many suspect the motive was to control the narrative ahead of the upcoming electoral cycle, which culminates in a presidential and parliamentary election to be held in December 2026.

In practice, the ban was lifted after only a few days (on January 28). But during this period, Proton VPN recorded a 5200% increase in sign-ups.

9. Venezuela

Political turmoil in Venezuela didn’t start with recent (January 2026) events. On January 10, 2025, then President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in for a third term. And with civil society groups documenting at least 83 new political detainees in the first 12 days of the month, domestic political tensions were running high.

The Venezuelan government responded by blocking multiple social media platforms, VPN websites, and international DNS services such as Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) and Google (8.8.8.8), that are commonly used to bypass local internet censorship.

In response, Proton VPN sign-ups shot up by 5,000% ahead of the inauguration.

10. Cameroon

On November 7, police in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, opened fire on a crowd of demonstrators who were protesting over alleged fraud in the presidential election held a month earlier. One person was killed and several injured.

The next day, the government declared a partial internet lockdown that mainly affected Yaoundé and Douala, citing “public‑order concerns”. ISPs were also ordered to block access to VPNs, and on November 11, security forces raided several internet cafés in Yaoundé, arresting at least 12 people for “unauthorized use of VPNs”.

Proton VPN sign-ups from Cameroon started spiking up to 3,000% as tensions mounted in the days leading up to the fatal demonstration, as Cameroonians preemptively prepared for the trouble to come. Widely condemned internationally, most internet restrictions have now been removed.

Final thoughts: VPNs defeat government censorship

Total internet blackouts are becoming more common. What these figures clearly show is that whenever repressive governments try to prevent their citizens from accessing the free and open internet, their citizens turn to VPNs to bypass these restrictions.

Unable to prevent this, authoritarian governments have been simply turning the internet off, rather than allowing their citizens to access international news sources and use social media to organize opposition.

The cost of doing this, to both their country’s economy and the livelihoods of their citizens, however, is huge. And in a world where even limited restrictions on social media inflame public opinion, imposing internet blackouts can only be seen as a tactic of desperation.

Update your old OpenVPN config files or switch to modern protocols

Douglas Crawford — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 12:05:59 GMT

To improve your security, Proton VPN no longer supports manual OpenVPN config files downloaded before September 2023. If you currently use older config files and wish to continue using manual OpenVPN configurations, you need to download new configuration files before the end of February 2026.

OpenVPN is an old VPN protocol that, although still robustly secure, is bloated and slow compared to powerful, sleek, and secure modern VPN protocols, such as WireGuard® and our own Stealth protocol. This is why we are working toward discontinuing support for OpenVPN on our official apps.

Instead of manual OpenVPN configs, we recommend using:

Our official apps (on supported platforms): These offer a wide selection of advanced features that are simply not possible using manual configuration. This includes support for our Stealth protocol, WireGuard TCP, and intuitive server selection using a graphic user interface.
WireGuard (on everything else): WireGuard offers better performance than OpenVPN, while being equally secure. So where possible, we recommend using WireGuard on devices that only support manual VPN configuration (such as routers).

We only recommend using manual OpenVPN configuration on devices (typically older ones) that don’t support WireGuard.

Who is affected?

This update is required for everyone who currently uses OpenVPN configuration files downloaded before September 2023 to manually configure a device for Proton VPN.

What do you need to do?

If your device(s) support our official apps or manual WireGuard configuration, we recommend switching to those.
If you need to continue using a manual OpenVPN configuration, please download new OpenVPN configuration files and use them to re-configure your device.

When do you need to do it?

You need to update your OpenVPN configs before the end of February 2026. After February 28, your old configurations will no longer work.

What’s changing?

At Proton VPN, we always maintain the highest possible security standards. To ensure this and other improvements, our newer OpenVPN configuration files use:

AES-256-GCM (instead of AES-256-CBC): With built-in integrity, support for parallel processing, and other efficiency improvements, AES-GCM is faster, stronger, and causes less battery drain than AES-CBC.
Newer server certificates: The newer X.509 certificates use stronger signature algorithms and longer validity periods to improve the chain of trust and resistance to certain attacks.
tls-crypt + tls-auth (instead of just tls-auth): tls-auth verifies that a packet really comes from a client that knows the shared secret. Adding tls-crypt means the entire packet (including its length and payload) is encrypted, so an attacker can’t read or guess its shape. This makes passive sniffing and crafted‑packet attacks much harder.

A faster and more secure OpenVPN

Although still secure, OpenVPN is an old and inefficient VPN protocol. Where possible, you should upgrade to a better, more modern alternative (our official apps, or manual WireGuard configuration on routers and the like).

However, OpenVPN is still very secure, and so remains fine for use on devices that don’t support the newer protocol. In this case, updating your manual configuration to use to our newer OpenVPN certificates will result in a faster and even more secure VPN setup.

Uganda shut down the internet ahead of elections; Proton VPN signups surge 8000%

Edward Komenda — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 21:01:06 GMT

Days ahead of Uganda’s January 15 general elections, government officials publicly denied plans to restrict internet access. In early January, authorities told local media there would be no internet shutdown during the vote.

On Tuesday, just days before polls opened, Uganda ordered a nationwide suspension of public internet access, citing the need to curb “misinformation” and “electoral fraud.”

For people on the ground, this wasn’t a shock.

In the weeks leading up to the election, Proton VPN saw two major signup surges from Uganda, each exceeding 250%, as people anticipated a blackout. When the shutdown actually began, Proton VPN signups from Uganda spiked by more than 8,000%, as people tried to reconnect to the outside world. The spike happened in the span of one hour.

Independent internet monitoring group NetBlocks confirmed a nation-scale disruption, matching official notices from the Uganda Communications Commission ordering restrictions to “mitigate the rapid spread of misinformation.”

Although authorities indicated a broad shutdown of internet services, monitoring data shows that some connections remain active. The initial drop was immediate, followed by a gradual decline, which may indicate a phased implementation across networks.

This pattern is becoming increasingly familiar.

Around the world, election periods now often coincide with internet shutdowns, throttling, or platform bans. Governments often frame these actions as ‘temporary safeguards’. In reality, they cut off journalists, civil society groups, opposition voices, and everyday people at the moment access to information matters most.

Uganda’s shutdown highlights a broader shift: people no longer take official reassurances at face value. They plan for digital blackouts the same way some might prepare for storms. The data shows Ugandans expected to be disconnected and acted ahead of time.

At Proton, we believe secure internet access is a cornerstone of democratic societies. When governments shut down connectivity during elections, protecting access to information becomes a necessity.