The Proton VPN Blog

What is dynamic pricing? How to get the best prices when shopping online

Douglas Crawford — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 15:42:28 GMT

Dynamic pricing (also called surge pricing, algorithmic pricing, or demand-based pricing) means changing the price of a product or service in real time in response to market conditions. The most visible factor is demand, such as Uber raising fares when it rains, or ticket sellers pushing up prices for a popular concert.

What is dynamic pricing?
Dynamic pricing vs. surveillance pricing
What is surge pricing?
How does dynamic pricing work?
Why dynamic pricing feels unfair
Dynamic pricing isn’t always bad
Real-world examples of surge and dynamic pricing
How to get the best prices when shopping online
Protect yourself against dynamic and surveillance pricing

Dynamic pricing isn’t new. American Airlines was using an early form of it, known as yield management, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. What has changed is the speed and scale at which it’s used. Algorithms now recalculate prices 24/7, so the price you see at lunchtime may not be the price you see later that evening.

Companies are understandably keen on anything that increases their profits. For consumers, though, the practice can seem unfair. This article explains how dynamic pricing works, why it feels the way it does, and how you can make it work for you rather than against you.

What is dynamic pricing?

Dynamic pricing means adjusting prices in real time based on factors such as demand, inventory levels, competitor pricing, and time of day. Instead of setting a fixed price, retailers use that keep recalculating what to charge.

The practice has spread fast. Economist Alberto Cavallo studied large US retailers that sell both online and in stores. He found that the share of their prices changing each month roughly doubled, from 15% in 2008–10 to almost 30% in 2014–17. He attributes the rise to online competition and algorithmic pricing.

Today, prices move faster still. Throughout 2025, web data firm Decodo tracked 12 products on each of more than 120 online stores in 40 countries, checking prices every four hours. Amazon was the most active retailer in the study, with 116,509 price changes over the year, followed by Walmart with 68,926 and Kroger with 55,601. Fashion and electronics saw the most changes of any product category.

The following chart compares various common pricing practices, ordered from least to most personally targeted.

Practice	Where you’d encounter it	What’s actually changing the price	Do two people see different prices at the same moment?
Peak pricing	Train off-peak tickets, electricity during busy hours, motorway tolls	A timetable the company published in advance, because busy periods are predictable	No. Everyone pays the same rate at the same time
Dynamic pricing	Shop prices online, hotel rooms, concert tickets	What’s happening right now: how many people want it, how much stock is left, what rivals charge, how close the event is	Mostly no. The price moves over the day, but whoever looks at that moment sees the same figure
Surge pricing	Ride-hailing apps, food delivery	Too many riders, not enough drivers, in one specific area	No if you’re standing next to each other. Yes if you’re a few streets away, in a different pickup zone
Promotional pricing	Supermarket apps, “members only” deals, end-of-season sales	What the seller wants this month: clear old stock, win new customers, ride a seasonal bump	Yes, whenever deals are aimed at particular shoppers. No, when a sale is open to everyone
Auctions	Online marketplaces, ad space on websites	Other buyers. The price is whatever people are willing to outbid each other with	Yes, usually. Winners often pay what they bid, or just enough to beat the next person
Surveillance pricing	Some online shops, grocery and pharmacy loyalty apps	What the seller knows about you: where you are, what device you use, what you’ve browsed and bought, and a guess at how much you can afford or how badly you need it	Yes. Two people can be quoted different amounts for the exact same item

Dynamic pricing vs. surveillance pricing

Dynamic pricing is often confused with surveillance pricing, but they work on different inputs:

Dynamic pricing responds to the market: demand, supply, competitors, and timing. Everyone shopping at the same moment under the same conditions sees the same price.
Surveillance pricing responds to you: Your location, device, browsing history, and purchase behavior are used to estimate how much you personally are willing to pay.

Learn more about surveillance pricing: How your data determines what you pay

In practice, the two are converging. Some companies use market-driven dynamic pricing as a base layer, and then apply personalized adjustments on top. Either way, the price you see changes, and it isn’t necessarily the best price available. But knowing which mechanism you’re dealing with tells you which counter-strategy works. You beat dynamic pricing with timing, and surveillance pricing with privacy.

What is surge pricing?

Surge pricing is the most visible form of dynamic pricing, resulting in a sharp, temporary price rise when demand suddenly outstrips supply.

The term is most closely associated with ride-hailing. Uber first “went dynamic” for Halloween in October 2011 and described the principle simply: “We raise the price of our service when the supply of available cars gets tight.”

The idea is now so familiar that the phrase alone can cause a backlash. In February 2024, Wendy’s CEO told investors the chain would test “dynamic pricing” on digital menu boards. After an outcry over “surge pricing” burgers, Wendy’s issued a clarification saying it would not raise prices “when our customers are visiting us most”.

Uber’s original justification was that higher fares would pay drivers more, drawing more cars onto the road. But this no longer seems to apply:

During a Chicago train outage in March 2022, riders paid fares set by a surge multiplier, but drivers received a flat surge fee instead of a share of the multiplied fare.
Uber and Lyft have since moved to upfront pricing. Riders are quoted a fixed price before booking, and drivers are offered a separately calculated fare. This “decoupled what the rider pays from what the driver earns”, with the platform keeping the difference.
Columbia Business School’s Len Sherman estimates Uber’s take rate rose from 32% in 2022 to 42% by the end of 2024. Uber puts its US take rate at around 20%.

In other words, surge pricing hasn’t gone away. It’s built into a single upfront price, so riders can no longer see when they’re paying a surge, and drivers can’t count on getting a share of it.

Surge pricing differs from everyday dynamic pricing in two ways. It’s triggered by events (such as a storm, a concert ending, or a transport strike), and it usually adds a premium on top of a standard rate, rather than moving the price both up and down.

How does dynamic pricing work?

Dynamic pricing algorithms weigh several factors that affect the market:

Time and demand: Prices rise when demand rises, such as during public events, bad weather, or weekends. This is the simplest form of dynamic pricing, and the easiest for retailers to defend.
Competitor pricing: Algorithms track rival prices and adjust to stay competitive, or to cash in when competitors raise theirs.
Inventory and capacity: Scarcity pushes prices up, and surplus stock pushes them down. This is why the last few seats on a flight often cost more.

Why dynamic pricing feels unfair

Fixed pricing carries an implicit social contract: The price you pay is the price everyone pays. In principle, dynamic pricing is neutral, since prices responding to supply and demand is how markets have always worked. Yet checking a flight price only to find it has risen five minutes later can leave you feeling manipulated. There are a few reasons for this:

Speed

We expect flights and hotels to cost more during school holidays, and we can plan and budget around this. When prices shift several times a day, such planning is impossible. Even when the business has legitimate reasons to change prices, the speed of the changes makes them feel arbitrary.

Lack of transparency

Most of us understand that a global oil crisis pushes up fuel prices. We may not like it, but the logic is clear.

Dynamic pricing algorithms are different. They react to competitor behavior, stock levels, and demand forecasts that no consumer can see or check. A pair of headphones might cost $79 on Tuesday and $109 on Thursday, and you have no way of knowing why.

This opacity corrodes trust, even when no dynamic pricing is involved. When ticket prices for the 2025 Oasis reunion tour rose while fans waited in online queues, many assumed they had been hit by dynamic pricing. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority later found no evidence that Ticketmaster had used dynamic pricing for the sale.

Instead, it was concerned that fans hadn’t been told standing tickets came in two price tiers, with the cheaper tier selling first. Ticketmaster agreed to warn buyers ahead of time, and to show the full range of prices to all customers. Without clear information, people assume the worst.

Surges only go one way

In theory, dynamic pricing is a two-way street. Surge pricing is not. It adds a premium when demand spikes, and when demand fades the price falls back to the standard rate, not below it. The customer pays the cost of the surge and never gets a matching discount.

It rewards those with the least to lose

Benefiting from dynamic pricing comes down to flexibility. Flights and hotels are much cheaper outside school holidays, but only people with free time, spare money, and few responsibilities can take advantage. Parents tied to the school calendar have no such choice, so they end up paying considerably more for the same goods and services.

Dynamic pricing isn’t always bad

Dynamic pricing has real upsides, and not only for retailers. Prices that track supply and demand help allocate scarce resources to those who value them most at a given moment, and help clear surplus stock efficiently.

There are less obvious benefits too. Cheaper fares on low-demand flights fill seats that would otherwise fly empty. Off-peak electricity tariffs reward households for shifting usage away from peak hours, which takes pressure off the grid.

Real-world examples of surge and dynamic pricing

Uber

Uber has used surge pricing since 2010, and it has repeatedly drawn public anger during emergencies. During the July 2019 Manhattan blackout, one rider told CBS that a trip that normally cost her about $20 cost “like $80 or $90,” roughly four times the usual fare. Uber said it capped surge pricing once it learned of the blackout. New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission said it would ask operators to disclose any fare changes made during the outage.

Ticketmaster

Ticketmaster uses dynamic pricing for its premium ticket tiers, which has drawn controversy. When Bruce Springsteen’s 2023 tour went on sale in July 2022, some Platinum tickets reached $5,000, and a US congressman demanded answers from the company.

Airbnb

The home-stay marketplace offers hosts Smart Pricing, a built-in tool that automatically adjusts nightly rates based on demand for similar listings in the area.

Delta Air Lines

In July 2025, three US senators wrote to Delta asking how it was using AI in its pricing. Delta responded that it does not and will not set individualized prices based on personal data. It said its AI tool is a decision-support system for revenue analysts, working within pricing systems that airlines, including Delta, have used for more than three decades. It’s a useful example of how quickly the public now links dynamic pricing with surveillance pricing.

How to get the best prices when shopping online

Because dynamic pricing responds to market conditions, it is predictable to a degree. The same signals that push prices up also tell you when they are likely to fall.

Plan around predictable peaks

Avoid booking flights in school holidays if you can, buy winter clothing in spring, and steer clear of traveling on public holiday weekends. Shopping when demand is naturally low is the most reliable way to pay less.

Track prices and set alerts

Rather than checking a price over and over, let a tool do it for you. Price trackers show how prices move over time, so you can tell whether today’s “deal” is really a low point. You can also use them to set alerts when prices fall.

Check prices at different times of day

Pricing algorithms run around the clock, so the same item can cost different amounts in the morning and the evening. If a purchase isn’t urgent, check back a few times before you buy.

Wait out a surge

Surges are temporary by design. Uber itself notes that riders can cancel a request and wait for demand to subside. If you can wait, check a rival app, take public transport, or sit down and have a coffee. You don’t have to pay the peak price.

Take advantage of flexible booking terms, then rebook

Where free cancellation is offered (as is common with hotels, Airbnb, and some car rentals), book early to reserve your place, then keep tracking the price and rebook if it drops.

Don’t let websites rush you

Countdown timers and “only two left at this price” messages are designed to stop you comparing with other services. Take the time to check competitors or a price tracker to see whether urgency is really needed.

Protect yourself against dynamic and surveillance pricing

Good timing only beats the market-driven part of the price. As noted earlier, many retailers also customize prices based on what they (and the ad-tech networks they use) know about you.

Our guide to surveillance pricing covers the practical steps you can take to reduce your digital footprint: shop in a browser rather than an app, block third-party cookies, and use a VPN to hide your IP address and location.

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Final thoughts on dynamic pricing

Dynamic pricing isn’t inherently unjust. When it lowers prices at quiet times, with cheaper matinee tickets, midweek hotel deals, or off-peak energy tariffs, it rewards flexibility and evens out demand.

The problem is how the costs and benefits are shared. The benefits mostly go to the seller. The costs (uncertainty, urgency premiums, and the sense of being gamed) fall mostly on the buyer, and hardest on those with the least flexibility. Knowing how the algorithms work lets you shop on your timetable rather than theirs.

Azerbaijan social media blocked amid protests over school hijab ban

Douglas Crawford — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 15:20:30 GMT

Instagram, TikTok, and X are blocked across multiple internet service providers in Azerbaijan, where protests have been growing against new school rules that keep girls who wear the hijab out of class.

Authorities haven’t confirmed or explained the blocks, and none of the platforms have commented on the situation.

As recorded by the Proton VPN Observatory, Proton VPN sign-ups from Azerbaijan began rising on October 11, as student protests spread, and surged to over 4,000% above the baseline following the social media blocks.

What happened?

Reports began early Monday morning (local time), October 12. On Instagram, feeds stopped updating and profiles and posts would not open. Then the platform stopped loading completely. On TikTok, uploads failed first, and then the app stopped opening.

Instagram and TikTok users told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that videos wouldn’t load, and some said the platforms worked only through a VPN. Outage trackers logged complaints from Azerbaijan but found no global outage on either platform. On October 13, NetBlocks confirmed that access to TikTok, Instagram, and X was blocked across multiple internet service providers.

Some social media users linked the disruption to videos of the school protests that were spreading on the platforms. One Baku activist, speaking anonymously, said that calls to protest were spreading through Instagram and TikTok, many of them from abroad. No official statement supports this, but it seems a likely explanation for the blocks.

As of October 14, we’ve found no reports that access has been restored, or that other platforms or mobile internet have been affected.

A school dress code sparked the protests

On September 21, Azerbaijan’s government approved new school uniform rules that bar clothing that conflicts with the “secular nature of education.” From October 6, similar rules applied to teachers. The rules don’t name the hijab, but rights defenders say they target it.

On October 12, schools began to enforce the rules. In several Baku schools, girls who wear the hijab were turned away. Some sat outside their schools and studied there in protest, and a teacher who wears the hijab taught a class outdoors. Other students boycotted lessons in solidarity.

That day, the Interior Ministry said the police arrested 37 people in Baku after protesters confronted school staff and disrupted traffic. According to the pro-government outlet Minval, protesters set fire to a school director’s car and tried to set fire to a school, but nobody was injured. Unofficial arrest counts are higher. Activists say that more than 200 people have been detained, and pro-government media report a similar figure.

The “hijab ban” has also strained relations with neighboring Turkey. An adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called the new rules unacceptable and said he expected Azerbaijan to reverse them. Azerbaijan’s ruling New Azerbaijan Party told Ankara to stay out of its internal affairs.

Public protest is rare in Azerbaijan, where the authorities tightly restrict unsanctioned gatherings. President Ilham Aliyev’s government has faced Western criticism over how it treats political opponents and independent media.

Azerbaijan restricted social media during past crises

This isn’t the first time Azerbaijan has cut off access to social media during a crisis:

September 2020: During fighting with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, the government restricted most major social media platforms and slowed the internet for over a month (as we reported at the time).
September 2022: TikTok was restricted on several internet providers during border clashes.
September 2023: An official told AFP that TikTok was blocked “temporarily” after military operations began in Nagorno-Karabakh. Access returned on October 31. The Proton VPN Observatory recorded a 2,500% over baseline increase in sign-ups from Azerbaijan on September 20, 2023.

A new law allows blocking without a court order

This year, Azerbaijan gave its authorities new powers over online platforms, which must now register in Azerbaijan or open a local office, and check users’ ages. If they don’t comply, they face fines, an advertising ban, and step-by-step slowing of their traffic.

The same amendments widen the reasons authorities can block a website without a court decision. New reasons include insults, defamation, and “disinformation” that threatens public safety. No official has said this law is behind the current blocks.

How to reach Instagram, TikTok, and X in Azerbaijan

Blocking social media during protests cuts people off from news and from each other, just when they need both most. But a block inside Azerbaijan doesn’t reach servers outside it. If Instagram, TikTok, or X doesn’t load, simply connect to a VPN server outside the country.

Our Free plan has no data or time limits. It also includes Stealth, our protocol that disguises a VPN connection to get past censorship and VPN blocks. If our website doesn’t load, you can get the apps from the Apple App Store, Google Play, the Amazon Appstore, Github, and F-Droid.

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Some of the biggest mobile games are infested with trackers and send your personal data to Russia & China

Douglas Crawford — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 11:59:14 GMT

Right now, there’s a good chance you have a free game on your phone. It might be something you play to pass the time on your daily commute, like a puzzle or word game. Or maybe your kids play it. It costs nothing to download, and it seems harmless enough, apart from the occasional ad.

New Proton research into the most downloaded mobile games across multiple countries, however, has found the vast majority are sending gamers’ personal data (sometimes including highly sensitive real-time location data) abroad to ad-tech companies with headquarters or key operations in China, Russia, and other countries with notoriously poor privacy laws and protections. And the fact that over 90% also send data to Israel and Five Eyes countries strongly suggests that your data can end up anywhere.

These aren’t niche rogue apps. They’re the most popular mobile games on the planet and have collectively been downloaded almost 20 billion times worldwide, and they include household names such as Block Blast!, Disney Solitaire, and Arrows Go!

What we found

Proton examined the most downloaded mobile games currently available through Google Play, analyzing:

How many trackers each contained
Where that data goes
How many gamers are affected

The results paint a disturbing picture of an industry that routinely includes trackers that send large amounts of highly personal data to countries hostile to privacy, with minimal transparency and no meaningful accountability.

While some might assume that these trackers are innocuous, the reality is more concerning. Most of these apps don’t acknowledge exactly what data they collect in practice, but the trackers give them the ability to collect highly personal information, including what device you’re using, which other apps and services you have on your phone, your usage habits, where you are, your payment information, age, gender and more.

When all added together, this creates a detailed picture of a person, and depending on which company or country this data is sent to, it’s very hard to work out what this data is eventually used for once it’s been collected.

In a best-case scenario, some shadowy ad-tech company knows too much about you or your children. A slightly more concerning scenario sees this ad-tech company targeted by hackers, putting your data in the hands of criminals. Possibly the worst case is that the ad-tech company is based in a country like Russia or China, meaning a potentially adversarial government gains access to millions of people’s personal information. No matter the scenario, none of them are positive.

Methodology

We examined free-to-play downloads from the Google Play store. Monthly download counts are estimates from AppTweak for the month of May. For tracker counts, we used data from Exodus Privacy, an open-source platform that analyzes Android apps to detect the code signatures of analytics, advertising, and profiling trackers.

While trackers originate from all over the world, we focused on games that sent information to Russia and China because of the geopolitical situation, the Five Eyes for the sheer number of consumers affected, and Israel, because of its highly prominent and mature ad-tech sector.

Findings per country

To better understand the scale of this global assault on privacy these apps represent, we have launched a study examining the most downloaded mobile games on Google Play in multiple countries. Below are our findings, starting with the United Kingdom and the United States, Germany and France.

United States

Proton examined the 100 most downloaded mobile games available to consumers in the US. The findings are striking:

Category	Percentage of downloads
Send data to Five Eyes entities	98%
Send user data to Israel	95%
Send user data to China	81%
Send user data to Russia	71%
Send user data to all of the above	70%

These are the 10 most popular games played in the United States.

App name	US May 2026 downloads	Global all-time downloads	Trackers	Location tracker	Israel tracker	Russia tracker	China tracker	5-Eyes tracker
Arrows – Puzzle Escape	689,000	10M+	30	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Arrows GO!	470,000	100M+	28	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Block Blast!	439,000	500M+	32	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Vita Mahjong	425,000	100M+	36	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Coin Master – Board Adventure	406,000	1M+	32	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Disney Solitaire	381,000	10M+	30	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Castle Busters	375,000	1M+	31	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Jewel Coloring	365,000	1M+	32	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Royal Kingdom	358,000	50M+	9	✗	✓	✗	✗	✓
Roblox	353,000	1B+	4	✗	✓	✗	✗	✓

This means Americans downloaded these games almost 20 million times in one month. Of these, games containing location trackers were downloaded 1.7 million times, and games actively sharing data with Chinese companies were downloaded 15.8 million times. Over 13.7 million downloads were found to be sharing data with Russia. As is also the case with the UK, almost all of these games sent data to Israeli companies, and most of them sent your data just about everywhere.

Concerning as your data going to foreign countries is, most American mobile gamers would likely be alarmed to learn their location data may be accessible not just to advertisers, but also to US government agencies. Federal agencies, including the FBI, have admitted to purchasing location data from commercial brokers, a practice critics say lets them sidestep the usual requirement to obtain a court-issued warrant.

Since the US is a member of the 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, and 14 Eyes spying alliances, personal data obtained through your mobile game apps may be widely shared with its allies.

United Kingdom

Proton examined the 100 most downloaded mobile games available to consumers in the UK, which tell a similar story to our US findings.

Category	Percentage of downloads
Send data to Five Eyes entities	99%
Send user data to Israel	95%
Send user data to China	84%
Send user data to Russia	74%
Send user data to all of the above	73%

These are the 10 most popular games played in the United Kingdom.

App name	UK May 2026 downloads	Global all-time downloads	Trackers	Location tracker	Israel tracker	Russia tracker	China tracker	5-Eyes tracker
Arrows – Puzzle Escape	112,000	10M+	30	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Township	87,000	100M+	11	✗	✓	✗	✗	✓
Vita Mahjong	87,000	100M+	36	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Block Blast!	79,000	500M+	32	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Castle Busters	75,000	1M+	31	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Magic Sort!	72,000	10M+	30	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Arrows GO!	64,000	10M+	28	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Fortnite	61,000	10M+	4	✗	✓	✗	✗	✓
Disney Solitaire	59,000	10M+	30	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Tasty Travels: Merge Game	59,000	10M+	17	✗	✓	✗	✓	✓

Proton found more than 300,000 UK game downloads in May 2026 alone that are actively tracking your physical location. Not only that, but games actively sharing data with Chinese companies were downloaded 3 million times, while 2.7 million downloads were found to be sharing data with Russian companies.

Interestingly, while Israeli trackers were one of the most common foreign trackers we found (appearing in 95% of total downloads) this was beaten by Five Eyes trackers, which appeared in 99% (or 3.6 million) total downloads. Out of the 100 games examined in the UK study, virtually all of them contained multiple trackers, with up to a whopping 36 different trackers per game.

Unsurprisingly in today’s interconnected online world, these figures track closely to those found in our analyses of other countries. However, they have particular significance in the UK, where debates about children’s online safety and digital privacy tools are ongoing.

Earlier this year, there were discussions about potentially restricting VPN use for minors under proposed online safety measures — concerns that ultimately led to further review. We’re glad the government has moved away from those restrictive proposals. While the intent behind protecting children online is clear, targeting VPNs would have been counterproductive.

Our research shows that VPNs actually make the internet safer for everyone, including young people. In an ecosystem where we’ve calculated that 74% of top games send data to Russian and Chinese ad-tech firms, reputable audited VPNs with built-in ad and tracker protection are one of the few tools available that allow ordinary people to defend against this. Banning young people from using VPNs would strip this protection from the very children the law claims to safeguard.

Germany

Proton examined the 100 most downloaded mobile games available to consumers in Germany. The findings echo those of the UK and US:

Category	Percentage of downloads
Send data to Five Eyes entities	97%
Send user data to Israel	91%
Send user data to China	82%
Send user data to Russia	69%
Send user data to all of the above	68%

The 10 most popular games played in Germany are:

App name	DE May 2026 downloads	Global all-time downloads	Trackers	Location tracker	Israel tracker	Russia tracker	China tracker	5-Eyes tracker
Arrows – Puzzle Escape	115,000	10M+	30	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Subway Surfers	90,000	1B+	32	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Vita Mahjong	86,000	100M+	36	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Brawl Stars	79,000	500M+	5	✗	✓	✗	✗	✓
Gossip Harbor®: Merge & Story	75,000	50M+	14	✗	✓	✗	✓	✓
Castle Busters	72,000	1M+	31	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Coin Master – Board Adventure	72,000	1M+	32	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Jewel Coloring	70,000	1M+	32	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Township	70,000	100M+	11	✗	✓	✗	✗	✓
Mob Control	68,000	100M+	32	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓

Together, Germany’s top 100 games were downloaded more than 3.9 million times in May 2026. Chinese trackers were present in 3.2 million of those downloads, Russian trackers in 2.7 million. Trackers belonging to Five Eyes companies appeared in 3.8 million downloads, which is close to the entire German market for free mobile games. More than 371,000 downloads went to apps that actively collect users’ physical location.

These numbers jar for a country with a long-standing cultural sensitivity to surveillance, reinforced by the GDPR, which Germany helped shape. For example, in 2025, citing privacy and cybersecurity concerns, the German government proved decisive in blocking an EU-wide “chat control” proposal to scan private messages for child sexual abuse material (although under interim rules, independent platforms can continue to do this).

Yet free mobile games aimed at the same population, including children, are quietly sending sensitive data to Chinese and Russian ad-tech firms with far less scrutiny than that debate received.

France

Proton examined the 100 most downloaded mobile games available to consumers in France. Again, the results are comparable:

Category	Percentage of downloads
Send data to Five Eyes entities	98%
Send user data to Israel	93%
Send user data to China	78%
Send user data to Russia	70%
Send user data to all of the above	68%

The 10 most popular games played in France are:

App name	FR May 2026 downloads	Global all-time downloads	Trackers	Location tracker	Israel tracker	Russia tracker	China tracker	5-Eyes tracker
Arrows – Puzzle Escape	117,000	10M+	30	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Vita Mahjong	98,000	100M+	36	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Subway Surfers	97,000	1B+	32	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Coin Master – Board Adventure	86,000	1M+	32	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Block Blast!	84,000	500M+	32	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Fortnite	80,000	10M+	4	✗	✓	✗	✗	✓
Mob Control	78,000	100M+	32	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Jewel Coloring	72,000	1M+	32	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Royal Kingdom	72,000	50M+	9	✗	✓	✗	✗	✓
Brawl Stars	71,000	500M+	5	✗	✓	✗	✗	✓

In May 2026, the top 100 games in France were downloaded more than 4 million times. Of these, 3.1 million downloads contained trackers sending data to China, 2.8 million to Russia, and 3.9 million to Five Eyes countries. Over 330,000 downloads included trackers actively collecting users’ location.

The contrast with France’s current online-safety debate is stark. In July 2026, French lawmakers passed a law banning under-15s from social media outright, requiring age verification to enforce it. More than 120 members of parliament referred the law to France’s Constitutional Council, and on 14 August 2026, the Council struck down the ban, ruling it disproportionately infringed freedom of expression, and separately that lawmakers had failed to build in the privacy safeguards needed to protect the age-verification data the ban would have required collecting.

In other words, France’s highest court blocked a child-protection measure partly because of the privacy risk posed by collecting children’s data. Yet games like Subway Surfers and Block Blast!, downloaded by children as often as adults, face no such scrutiny at all while sending data to ad-tech networks in Beijing and Moscow.

The hidden cost of free

Sending personal data to ad-tech and data-broker networks is how the entire free-to-play ecosystem works, and until people are willing to pay upfront for the games they play, this won’t change.

While most gamers understand this monetization model, they are unlikely to grasp the sheer scale and intrusiveness of the tracking performed, or that their data, often routed via long and opaque supply chains, ends up in China, Russia, and Israel. And with an average of 29 trackers per game, a considerable chunk of your personal data ends up in all three.

Location tracking is particularly worrying

Of all the data being collected, location information deserves particular attention, because location data is not just data. It’s a record of your life.

It tells whoever holds it where you work and where you sleep. It records whether you attended a protest, visited a medical clinic, went to a place of worship, or met with someone you’d rather keep private. It does this continuously, building a timeline of your movements that’s far more revealing than most people understand or would care for.

Of the top 100 games most downloaded globally, seven track your location:

Magic Tiles 3™ – Piano Game
Pokémon GO
Chess – Play and Learn Online
Arrows – Puzzle Escape
Jewel Coloring
3D Bubble Shoot – ASMR Game
Rebel Glam: Dress Up Games

Pokémon Go has a legitimate reason to do this, since its core mechanic depends on knowing your physical location, but a puzzle game or coloring game has no legitimate need for your GPS coordinates. The fact that they have them anyway, and are sharing them with third parties in foreign countries, should concern every mobile gamer.

It’s not just governments and ad-tech companies you need to worry about

If data exists, it can be hacked by criminals. For example: Mixpanel is a product analytics platform often embedded into apps to track their users’ behavior. In November 2025, Mixpanel reported a data breach that allowed attackers to steal historic customer analytics and user-identifiable metadata. Roblox, for example, one of the most popular free games, with over a billions global downloads all-time, sends data to Mixpanel.

What can you do about it?

The free-to-play industry’s multi-billion-dollar revenue depends on you not fully understanding what’s being collected and where it goes. Regulation has been slow and haphazard, and app stores, which could enforce meaningful data-sharing disclosures, have largely looked the other way while taking a cut from the profits.

This all means that structural change is unlikely to happen anytime soon (if ever), so it falls on you, as an individual gamer, to protect yourself.

Use NetShield Ad-blocker

NetShield Ad-blocker is built into Proton VPN on every platform and included with all paid plans. It filters DNS requests, so when an app tries to load content from a domain on our blocklist, the lookup never resolves, and the request dies before anything downloads. This prevents apps from contacting known ad, tracker, and malware domains.

Learn more about NetShield Ad-blocker

Get Proton VPN

Pay for games up front

It simply cannot be said too many times: if you don’t pay for a product, you are the product. Game developers need to make money to pay their bills and to develop new cool stuff. If you won’t simply pay for the games you play, it’s inevitable that they monetize your data by selling it to ad-tech networks.

On most paid-for games, one of the things you’re paying for is software that’s free of ads.

A darker reality

Mobile games are fun, and free is everyone’s favorite price. Having to put up with a few ads may seem like a reasonable cost to pay, but the reality is much darker. The mobile gaming industry is built on an insidious surveillance network with extraordinary reach into the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people — all with very little transparency and no meaningful oversight.

Behind each statistic is a person who opened a puzzle game on their daily commute or let their child play a coloring app before bedtime, with no idea that their personal information is being packaged and dispatched to servers in countries with poor privacy protections and that are, in some cases, hostile to the West.

At Proton, we believe privacy is a right, not a feature. And it’s time the mobile gaming industry started treating it that way.

When Discord disappeared from the Philippines, Filipinos turned to VPNs

Douglas Crawford — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 18:48:21 GMT

Over the past 36 hours, Proton VPN saw a sharp spike in sign-ups from the Philippines. At its peak, hourly sign-ups exceeded 1,400% above the same hour the previous week, and on a daily basis, total sign-ups ran nearly 300% over baseline. This spike lines up closely with a brief but chaotic block of Discord by the Philippine government.

What happened?

In a directive issued on September 21, 2026, the Philippines’ Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) delivered an ultimatum to two of the world’s biggest community platforms: Reddit (a network of topic forums where users post and vote content up or down) and Discord (most known as a social network for gamers) were given 24 hours to designate a local representative in the country, or risk having access blocked for Filipino users.

This move came in the wake of a series of school shootings in the Philippines. Incidents in Tacloban in June, Zamboanga in August, and a third in Banga, South Cotabato on September 18, when a 16-year-old student shot at students before turning the gun on himself, killing three and injuring eight others.

Reddit engaged quickly, resulting in the CICC granting it an extension after its officials met with the agency and discussed its commitments on child safety. In the end, Reddit was never actually blocked.

Discord’s response, however, was deemed insufficient, and on September 23, telecom operators began blocking it. Giving in to this pressure, Discord met with the CICC and agreed to establish a Philippine presence, designate a local point person, and open a direct coordination channel with authorities. The result? The ban was officially lifted.

A patchy shutdown

Because blocking was implemented network by network, Discord’s disappearance in the Philippines was patchy. Users on some major carriers lost access entirely, while others remained unaffected. This inconsistency itself drove confusion and anxiety, as nobody knew whether their communities, servers, and livelihoods would still be there tomorrow.

When the the ban was lifted, the same fragmentation applied in reverse. Some ISPs were as slow to restore access as they had been to revoke it, leaving users unable to connect to Discord long after the official reversal.

A blow to freelancers

Discord is primarily known as a social network for gamers, but its ban in the Philippines had much more serious consequences than this might suggest. For millions of Filipinos, Discord stopped being a gaming app a long time ago. It’s where online classes run their discussion channels, where esports teams share scrimmage schedules, and, critically, where a huge slice of the country’s remote-work economy operates.

When the block hit, this workforce was effectively cut off from their livelihoods. Massive local servers — like Barangay VA Helpdesk, Nexus, and Jobcord, which function as job boards, training grounds, and support networks for virtual assistants — became unreachable depending on users’ ISPs. Former DICT Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy estimated the ban threatened the financial lifelines of at least 15,000 Filipino freelancers and virtual assistants.

Reactions from affected workers ranged from quiet desperation to fury.

Voice actor and content creator KiraKiraKat described relying on Discord as an artist working in game development — one of many creative and remote professionals who found themselves cut off mid-project. Scam Watch Pilipinas, a volunteer anti-scam group, publicly opposed the blanket block, warning how impacted virtual assistants, freelancers, and tech workers as much as “bad actors”.

To its credit, the CICC eventually acknowledged the disruption its own order had caused, issuing a public apology once the ban was lifted. But an apology, however sincere, doesn’t recover a missed client deadline, and it doesn’t explain why the burden of routing around a blunt restriction fell, once again, on ordinary people who just wanted to work and provide for their families.

The Proton VPN signup spike

Our own data on hourly signups from the Philippines mirrors this timeline closely.

Sign-ups tracked close to normal (and even dipped slightly below the usual pattern for stretches of the preceding three weeks) until late on September 22, when they began climbing sharply, briefly exceeding 1,400% above the equivalent hour the previous week.

In daily terms, this amounted to a nearly 300% increase over baseline.

This kind of spike is a familiar pattern. Whenever a widely used platform suddenly becomes unreachable, people reach for Proton VPN to route around the block.

An unfolding story

At the time of this writing, Proton VPN signups in the Philippines remain much high than our pre-block baseline, even with the ban officially lifted. This is likely a reflection of the still-uneven restoration across networks, along with some users staying connected out of caution.

If your access to services you rely on is subject to sudden, unpredictable network-level interference, Proton VPN is available on all platforms. Our free plan has no data caps, no logs, and no ads, because access to the open internet shouldn’t depend on where you live or who your ISP is.

Get Proton VPN

Shady VPNs could be spying on millions of Americans

Douglas Crawford — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 11:45:20 GMT

After a months-long survey of over 7,000 mobile VPN apps around the world, Proton has found that 85% of those downloaded in the US contain trackers, and around a quarter of those actively track users’ physical location.

Perhaps even more concerning, we also learned that 64 of the 390 VPNs downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play in the US are owned by Chinese companies, which are legally bound to share data with their authoritarian government.

Given that most people who use a virtual private network do so specifically to protect their privacy, the risks are obvious. And despite promises to protect the public, Google and Apple allowed these suspect VPNs to be downloaded more than 13.2 million times in June 2026 alone.

Methodology

We examined free-to-pay downloads from the Google Play store. Monthly download counts are estimates from AppTweak for the month of May. For tracker counts, we used data from Exodus Privacy, an open-source platform that analyzes Android apps to detect the code signatures of analytics, advertising, and profiling trackers.

How VPNs should work

When you use a VPN, you expect privacy. A trustworthy VPN stops websites from seeing your real IP address and prevents your internet service provider (and, by extension , your government) from knowing what you do online.

VPNs have become a part of daily life for as many has 100 million Americans. Spend just a few minutes on YouTube and you’ll almost certainly encounter an ad for VPNs, which are typically promoted as a vital tool for privacy, security, and bypassing censorship.

For the most reputable services, this claim largely holds up. But this in itself can create a false sense of security for millions of consumers who are tempted by the free VPNs that feature prominently on the app stores, and it hides the fact that many dubious VPNs are doing the exact opposite of what you’d expect from them.

Who owns your VPN?

When it comes to VPNs, transparency is vital.

You should know who owns the company you’re trusting with your privacy. Our analysis has found that dozens of VPNs available in the US are owned by companies based in jurisdictions with intrusive data surveillance laws. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many go to considerable lengths to conceal this fact.

Of the VPNs we studied, 64 are owned by Chinese companies. Under Chinese law, companies are required to make user data available to the government upon request. What makes this worse is that 31 of these Chinese-owned VPNs actively hide their real ownership behind shell companies registered in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, and the UK.

Users in the US downloaded these shady Chinese apps more than 3 million times over one month.

Where does your data go?

Even VPNs that aren’t directly owned by companies based in countries known for their mass surveillance practices can endanger users’ privacy.

Our analysis found that 85% of VPNs available in the US contain trackers designed to collect and share highly personal user data. This can include your unique device ID (GAID), device model, network type, mobile carrier name, and more.

Trackers sending data to	Downloads in June
China	1.5 million
Russia	1.4 million
Israel	2.6 million
All three	800,000
Five Eyes countries	4.6 million

Many of these US-owned apps entered commercial agreements with foreign companies, embedding their tracking software as part of the deal. They typically see VPN apps (often purchased as off-the-shelf white-label products) as just another popular app category that, like games, can be monetized thorough advertising.

This is simply how the mobile app industry operates. And in a world where app stores take around 30% of sales revenue, it’s not surprising that app providers might choose to monetize their products though privacy-invasive advertising, rather than up-front paid subscriptions.

But VPN apps are not games. Millions of Americans use them to protect their privacy, not to sell their privacy to ad-tech companies, many of which are based in countries with governments that are hostile to privacy, and, in many cases, also hostile to US interests.

Although it’s difficult to know exactly what’s being done with your data, there are worrying signs. Three of the VPN services we looked at are actually owned by market research companies: ‎Phone Guardian Safe WiFi (Sensor Tower), My Mobile Secure VPN (Comscore), and Urban VPN (BiScience, which has been been shown to capture user conversations across several services and share them with AI chat platforms).

Some VPNs track your location

In what many could reasonably see as the ultimate act of betrayal, 64 VPN apps actively track your physical location using GPS and other geolocation data. Anyone with access to this data can see if you are at a protest or meeting with a journalist, lawyer, or source, and ultimately share that information with law enforcement or intelligence services.

These apps include some of the most popular VPNs in the US, such as VPN Proxy Master, VPN-Fast VPN Super, and X-VPN, and collectively they were downloaded more than 3 million times in June. This means roughly 20% of all VPN downloads in our dataset come from apps that track where you are, which is likely the very thing you installed a VPN to prevent.

And this tracking data is often being made available to governments that are difficult to trust.

App stores are profiting from surveillance

Apple and Google publicly tout their privacy credentials. Yet these apps, which can track everything you do online and send your personal data to ad-tech companies, are freely downloadable on their app stores with no warning labels.

While app stores require VPN developers to submit their identities and their privacy policies, they rely heavily on self-reporting and do little to verify what they are told. Apple and Google check that the paperwork exists, but they don’t independently audit whether a VPN actually behaves in the way its privacy policy claims.

Despite their privacy claims, Apple and Google prioritize profits over the best interests of their users. They typically take around a 30% commission on all revenue generated from in-app purchases and subscriptions. Apple, in particular, seeks to justify this commission by claiming it is necessary to cover the costs of reviewing and curating apps to keep users safe (despite credible evidence that it pockets up 78% of these fees as pure profit).

The profit-centric model is also amply illustrated by Apple’s willingness to cooperate with authoritarian orders from the Chinese government, which has resulted in 66 of the 100 most popular apps worldwide being unavailable to iOS users in China.

Many of these are news apps (including the likes of The New York Times, BBC News, and Reuters), showing that Apple is happy to assist the Chinese government’s censorship regime in exchange for access to the highly lucrative China market. It even threatened to remove Proton VPN because the App Store description said our app could be used to “unblock censored websites.”

The result? Authoritarian-linked VPNs that have access to all your traffic, including your web browsing, app usage, and personal information, are tracking your online behavior for advertising purposes.

So what can be done about it?

To permit these suspicious apps to exist on their platforms is a dereliction of duty to both consumers and developers. This is unacceptable. We therefore urge Apple and Google to:

Perform more stringent forensic security and ownership checks on VPN apps (not simply rely on self-reporting)
Remove all apps that fail to meet these checks from their app stores
Provide greater transparency about all VPN apps so that people can make informed decisions about which ones can be trusted. This includes providing information on where a company is (really) based and what it’s doing with your data

For such transparency to be effective, Apple and Google must use a tiny portion of their vast resources to investigate services and ascertain that they are what they purport to be.

What you can do to stay safe

To safely protect your privacy with a VPN:

Use a service with transparent ownership that’s located in a country with real privacy laws
Only trust VPNs that have been independently audited

There’s no excuse

Because all of your internet activity passes through its servers, any VPN has the potential to access a great deal of highly personal information about you, your life, your political leanings, what you like to buy, and your hobbies and interests. Even if privacy is not a primary concern when picking a VPN app, you should be worried about shadowy, unaccountable companies with links to places like China and Russia, where the government has unrestricted access to all data.

In total, 85% of the apps we studied in the US are behaving in ways contrary to how they are marketed and what you’d reasonably expect from a VPN service. This is inexcusable.

Many of these apps may claim that this data collection is only done to optimize performance. But the fact that they can collect this data — and that so much of it is sent to places like Russia and China — is cause for grave concern.

Thankfully, there are reputable VPN services that genuinely care about protecting your privacy. This includes Proton VPN, which offers 100% free VPN service with open-source apps, no ads, no data limits, and a strict no-logs policy that’s independently audited and backed by Swiss privacy laws.

How can we do this? It’s quite simple. We transparently fund our free plan with a premium service that offers a range of advanced (but entirely optional) features. Because at Proton, we believe that privacy shouldn’t come with strings attached.

Cover image by Bernard Leonardo.

Website: https://dranreboel.myportfolio.com
IG @dranreboel https://www.instagram.com/dranreboel/
LI https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernard-leonardo-271b56210/

How to delete your Instagram account and erase your data

Proton Team — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 17:21:16 GMT

Whether you’re trying to curb screen time, reduce your online presence, evade an online stalker, or protect your privacy from the likes of Meta, deleting social media is often a first step. But there’s a little more to it than simply deleting apps from your phone. With Instagram, you’ll probably want to not just delete your account, but permanently erase your data as well.

Not ready to ditch your Instagram handle all together? You can also make your account private or temporarily disable it and come back any time.

How to delete Instagram
How to disable Instagram
How to download your data before deleting Instagram
How to make Instagram private
How to protect your privacy on Instagram
Ditch the app
You don’t owe Meta your data

How to permanently delete your Instagram account and data

Ready to delete your Instagram presence for good? Deleting your account is a permanent, irreversible option that will remove your photos and videos, as well as all your interactions with other accounts, including likes, follows, and comments on other profiles.

Open the app and:

Tap your Profile icon → Menu (☰) → Settings and Privacy.
Go to Accounts Center Profiles and personal details Instagram → Manage.
Select Delete account and tap Continue

That’s all that’s required on your part to delete your account. But there is a caveat. Instagram gives you a 30-day grace period to change your mind. During the 30 days after your deletion request, you can opt to reactivate your account, halting the deletion of your information and media. After 30 days, the information will be gone for good.

How to temporarily disable your Instagram account

If you’d rather just take a break from Instagram, you can deactivate your account, which effectively hides it until you decide to reactivate it. This is a temporary measure that you can choose to do on a weekly basis, indefinitely.

When your account is disabled, followers won’t be able to see your photos or videos, and you won’t appear in searches. Similarly, your likes, comments, and follows won’t appear in the app. Once you reactivate your account, all of this information will reappear.

Keep in mind that you can’t sign in to your account when it’s disabled. You’ll have to reactivate it to view your own content and that of others.

To temporarily disable your Instagram account:

Tap your Profile icon → Menu (☰) → Settings and Privacy.
Go to Accounts Center → Profiles and personal details → Manage Accounts → Instagram → Manage.
Select Deactivate account and tap Continue.

To reactivate your Instagram account, sign in to the app again. Doing this will reactivate your account, making your profile visible again.

How to download your data before deleting your account

Before permanently deleting your account, you can download and save your data, including your photos and videos, to keep and store elsewhere. To do this:

Tap your Profile icon → Menu (☰) → Settings and Privacy.
Go to Accounts Center → Your information and permissions → Export your information and tap Create export.

You can export your information to a device or external service either in HTML or JSON formats. You can download all of your information or pick and choose categories, such as comments, likes, saved posts, and media. You can also specify a time range for a custom date or all of time.

Information exports default to medium quality for photos and videos, but you can opt for higher or lower quality depending on the amount of space you have available for storing.

Tap Start export when you’re ready.

How to make your Instagram account private

Looking to share a little less on Instagram, but still want to view other people’s content through the app? You can always opt to make your profile private. Public profiles are viewable by all Instagram users. With a private account, only approved followers can to view your content.

Similarly, you can limit who’s able to view your Instagram stories, and even compile a close friends list for stories, only showing a select few certain updates.

To go private:

Tap your Profile icon → Menu (☰) → Settings and Privacy.
Go to Accounts Center → Account privacy and toggle the Private account switch on.

How to protect your privacy on Instagram

Making your profile private is one way to ensure only the users you approve can view your content, but there are other ways to help guarantee you aren’t making yourself vulnerable to data breaches and hacks.

Meta’s privacy center within your app settings has tons of details on how to achieve this within Instagram, beginning with the option to private message other users using end-to-end encryption. If your teen is using the app, you can implement controls for age-appropriate use and content.

You can change or reset your Instagram password at any time and add two-factor authentication and additional recovery methods in the case of a problem accessing your account. You can block other profiles from seeing what you share, and from messaging you. In addition, you can review your tags on other users’ photos and posts before approving them.

Instagram allows UK users to pay a subscription fee for an ad-free experience, though experts disagree on how much safer this makes the app when it comes to your personal data.

Be sure to update your Meta privacy settings and clear your search history regularly. The Instagram app automatically deletes your search history after 30 days, but you can set it to wipe clean as often as every three days. This feature is under Your information and permissions in the Accounts Center. Tap Search history and Keep searches for to adjust the time frame.

Finally, adjust the amount of information Instagram shares with businesses in the Accounts Center under Your information and permissions. Tap Your activity off Meta technologies to adjust your settings.

If you’re concerned about your privacy, ditch the app

If you can’t live without Instagram but are concerned about your privacy, one of the most powerful steps you can take is to ditch the app and access your account through a web browser. Meta is able to collect far less information about you through a browser than through its apps, and most mobile browsers can even send notifications from Instagram website to your phone.

With a good VPN, you can also easily hide your real IP address (the single most revealing piece of data a website can collect about you) from Meta.

Get Proton VPN

Memorialize an Instagram account

Meta offers a way to remember loved ones who have died by memorializing their social media presence. You memorialize someone’s account on their behalf or designate someone to memorialize your own when you die. You can designate a contact for this within the app any time. Alternatively, you can tell Instagram to simply delete your profile after you pass.

To memorialize or delete the account of someone who has not already set a preference within the app, contact Instagram with proof of death, including an obituary or news article, to have the profile changed.

Final thoughts on Instagram’s privacy and data collection policies

Instagram doesn’t exist to help you stay in touch with people. It exists to keep you scrolling long enough to profile you and sell that profile to advertisers, and Meta has built an entire company around making that as hard to opt out of as possible. Deactivation at least pauses this, but deleting your account puts an end to it.

However, for many of us, the benefits of sharing our lives and letting others share their with us outweighs privacy concerns. In this case, a private account, a wiped search history, and using the browser instead of the app are small ways to claw back a bit of what you’re currently handing over for free.

You don’t owe Meta your data just because deleting the account feels like a hassle. The hassle is the point, it’s designed that way.

Want to de-Meta your life? Learn how to ow to delete your Facebook account (or deactivate it)

Vietnam’s new fake news fines triple VPN demand

Douglas Crawford — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 19:07:57 GMT

On July 1, 2026, new rules took effect in Vietnam that penalize social media users who the government deems sharing fabricated or false information. In the weeks since, the Proton VPN Observatory has noticed a sharp increase in sign-ups for our VPN service (+150 over the baseline, and triple the figures we saw at the beginning of the month).

What’s notable is that signups began to spike on July 7, when the first reported fine under the decree (2.5 million VND against a man in Lào Cai province for a rude Facebook comment aimed at local police) was widely reported in local media.

What happened?

The Vietnamese government is now imposing fines on people who share what it defines as fake, false, distorted, or defamatory content on social media. The penalty structure has two tiers:

20–30 million VND (roughly $794–$1,190) for sharing content judged to harm the reputation of state agencies or organizations, or the honor and dignity of individuals. This is a category that also covers the posting of graphic, violent imagery, unauthorized sharing of copyrighted journalism or creative work, promoting banned goods or services, misrepresenting Vietnam’s territorial maps, or linking to content already banned under Vietnamese law.
30–50 million VND (roughly $1,190–$1,984) for content judged to distort history, deny “revolutionary achievements,” undermine national unity, insult religion, incite discrimination, leak state secrets or private information below the criminal threshold, or spread information that causes public panic or disrupts government operations (assuming it doesn’t already meet the bar for criminal prosecution).

Several of these categories, such as “undermines national unity,” “harms the reputation of organizations,” “causes public panic,” are highly ambiguous and and leave considerable room for interpretation. As one dissident publication put it, “police still decide the truth.”

Other contributing factors

Correlation, of course, is not the same as proven causation. Other less direct events that have likely contributed to such a steep rise in VPN signups include:

The “Chuyện với Thanh” case

A book by FPT co-founder Nguyễn Thành Nam, reinterpreting Hồ Chí Minh’s early life, was denounced in June as insulting the national leader. The publisher was fined and suspended before Nam and a colleague were criminally charged under Article 117 (anti-state propaganda). State TV confirmed the arrests on July 7.

Roblox VNG lockdown

Vietnam’s local Roblox version (run by publisher VNG) went fully live on August 13, 2026, blocking around 80% of games, disabling chat, and capping daily play at 3 hours. Unusually, it also prevented Vietnamese users from bypassing these restrictions by using a VPN to reach Roblox’ international servers.

No explanation has been provided as to why these changes have been made, but they may be linked to unease that Roblox could be used as a communications platform by those seeking to evade government scrutiny.

Unsurprisingly, this hasn’t gone well. It should be noted, however, that while this incident may have helped to raise awareness of VPNs, VNG has gone to great lengths to ensure VPNs are of limited use for bypassing its restrictions.

An increasingly repressive regime

It is clear that the Vietnamese government is becoming increasingly intolerant of dissent — and consequently suspicious of social media and similar channels (like Roblox), over which it can spread.

As always, the best way to protect your online activity from government scrutiny and access the free international press is to use a reputable VPN. Use our internet censorship simulator to see which apps and online services are blocked around the world.

Get Proton VPN

Is TikTok banned again in Oman?

Douglas Crawford — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 19:01:52 GMT

TikTok does appear to be banned in Oman, though the exact reason and cause are not clear, and the government has previously refused to acknowledge that it bans tech platforms.

In April 2025, the Omani Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA) “clarified” that TikTok connection issues were due to “technical reasons” and that TikTok was not banned. (They did not explain to reporters how technical reasons would affect only TikTok and not other internet services.)

Now, for the second time in about 18 months, Omanis are experiencing problems accessing TikTok. Starting August 13, 2026, users began to complain on Reddit and other social media platforms that TikTok appears to be banned. At the same time, the Proton VPN Observatory recorded a significant (+350% increase over the baseline) jump in sign-ups for our VPN service.

No official TikTok ban has been announced, and it seems likely the Omani government will again blame technical reasons for the current issues experienced by TikTok users.

Posters on Reddit, however, have suggested the government may be interfering with TikTok access following the sentencing of a woman to one year in prison and deportation for producing and publishing content that violated public morals during a live broadcast on social media.

Whatever the reasons for this disruption, Proton VPN can help — simply connect to one of our VPN servers located outside Oman to hide your online activity from Omani ISPs and appear to access the internet from that (unrestricted) location.

Get Proton VPN

How and why we built Proton protocols: a new VPN client engine

Antonio Cesarano — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:01:07 GMT

Over the past few months, Proton VPN has been working on Proton protocols, a new client‑side VPN protocol codebase. Known internally by the codename ProTUN, this new code architecture is written in Rust. Although we forked cryptography code from Cloudflare’s BoringTun project, the completely redesigned architecture is Proton’s.

Why we need a new VPN core

WireGuard® is a state-of-the-art VPN protocol that is as secure as OpenVPN but faster and more powerful. This is why we’re starting to remove OpenVPN support from our official apps, to focus instead on WireGuard.

However, our apps currently use the official wireguard-go implementation of WireGuard. And it’s a great implementation, with an elegantly minimal design that makes it fast, secure, and easier to audit than traditional VPN protocols.

However, wireguard-go doesn’t integrate well with the languages we use natively to develop Proton VPN on the multiple platforms that we support (such as Kotlin on Android and Swift on iOS). This slows development, complicates debugging, and introduces stability challenges.

Proton protocols solves these problems.

Proton protocols is a new client-side VPN framework based on WireGuard. Because it’s written in Rust and designed as a shared, extensible core, ProTUN can be consistently deployed across platforms and adapted to different network environments. This will let us diagnose issues faster, improve stability, and build advanced functionality directly into the VPN stack.

Most importantly, Proton protocols gives us the flexibility to respond quickly to censorship and network interference, which is an area where we expect the biggest long-term gains.

Under the hood

Encrypting traffic with a new WireGuard core

At the heart of the Proton protocols project is libpvpnclient, a clean, standalone implementation of the WireGuard protocol written in Rust. Its job is simple but critical: to encrypt your internet traffic and keep your connection secure.

What’s different from wireguard-go is how it’s built. Whereas wireguard-go is a simple WireGuard client, libpvpnclient is an entire new framework onto which we can develop advanced new features and functionalities.

And instead of being tightly bound to a specific operating system, libpvpnclient is designed as a pure, platform-independent core. This allows us to reuse the same high-quality implementation everywhere — on desktop, mobile, and beyond. This separation makes a big difference behind the scenes. It lets us:

Test and debug complex edge cases in controlled, repeatable environments
Roll out improvements faster and more consistently across platforms
Experiment with new techniques to resist censorship and traffic blocking

For you, this translates into faster updates, fewer platform-specific issues, and a VPN that adapts more quickly as network conditions and censorship methods change. ProTUN itself is our name for the wrapper around libpvpnclient that adapts the Rust-based library to each operating system that we support.

It works hand-in-hand with LocalAgent. This is our in-house control channel that allows us to implement certificate-based authentication, and which we’ve also just streamlined and rewritten in Rust.

This new VPN core is available to test-run now as a beta (early access) feature on the following platforms:

Windows
Android
iOS and iPadOS (bringing support for advanced kill switch)
Linux GUI app (bringing support for our censorship-resistant Stealth protocol)

Making it easier to reach Proton VPN servers

We’re also working on phase two of Proton protocols. Codenamed muon, this is a flexible networking layer that safely connects our apps to Proton’s VPN API, even in situations where the Proton API is itself being censored.

Before a VPN can protect your traffic, it has to connect safely in the first place to the Proton API. And that’s becoming increasingly difficult. In some countries and networks, API connections are blocked or monitored at the DNS level or identified by inspecting the server names (a technique known as SNI snooping).

To address this, we’re building muon, a new gateway between our apps and Proton’s API. Again written in Rust for safety and performance, muon handles the very first network requests your app makes, and can then route them securely through to Proton VPN’s WireGuard protocol (in the long term, this functionality will replace our existing alternative routing anti-censorship solution).

In practical terms, this means that from the moment you open the Proton VPN app in a country where access is known to be censored, your communication to the Proton API will already be protected (even before a system-level VPN connection is fully established). And in restrictive countries, your ISP won’t even know that you’re connecting to Proton APIs.

This protection will be automatic and invisible to you, and means that you’re more likely to get a working connection in censored countries. muon is so useful for defeating censorship, in fact, that we’re going to use it on all Proton apps (not just VPN), giving you built‑in censorship protection across our ecosystem from the get-go. We’ll be rolling it out soon, so watch this space.

A solid foundation for what comes next

libpvpnclient (with the Proton protocols wrapper) and muon together form a new platform that gives our engineers far more flexibility. This allows us to experiment safely with improvements in connection stability, battery usage, and resilience, and prepares the groundwork for future technologies, like stronger anti-censorship techniques and post-quantum cryptography.

We see this as a major step forward in making the internet more accessible, reliable, and private for everyone. And this is just the beginning. We’re excited to see where this new foundation takes Proton VPN in 2026 and beyond.

“WireGuard” is a registered trademark of Jason A. Donenfeld.

Introducing Proton protocols: a new VPN protocol codebase for faster, more reliable apps

Antonio Cesarano — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:01:05 GMT

Our apps work well, but we’re reaching the limits of what’s possible with our current codebase. For Proton VPN to future-proof our apps, build more innovative VPN features, and be fighting-fit for our next phase of growth, we need a new foundation.

We’re therefore rolling out a new client‑side VPN protocol codebase to our b eta apps that takes the best parts of our existing codebase and builds on them to unlock the next generation of Proton VPN performance, reliability, and censorship resistance. This modern, flexible VPN core allows us to:

Build faster, more reliable apps
Deliver best-in-class, anti-censorship capabilities
Ship features and improvements more quickly across all our apps
Enable Stealth support on Linux
Lay the groundwork for post-quantum encryption (planned)

Want more technical details? Find out more

What is a VPN protocol?

A VPN protocol is the set of rules that decides how your device connects to a VPN server and how your data is encrypted and transmitted.

It’s the method a VPN uses to:

Create a secure tunnel: This happens the moment you tap Connect in our apps. The app connects to one of our VPN servers, and all internet traffic to and from your device is routed through the connection.
Encrypt your internet traffic: All data traveling through the VPN tunnel is securely encrypted (scrambled using very complex math) so that no-one but you can see it. This includes your ISP and anyone else monitoring your network.
Keep the connection stable and fast: The protocol manages the connection in the background, helping your device stay connected when you switch networks, lose signal briefly, or move between WiFi and mobile data.

Learn more about VPN protocols

Test run our new codebase now

If you’d like to help us put this exciting new codebase through its paces, it’s now available on our beta (early access) app for:

Windows
Android
iOS and iPadOS (bringing support for advanced kill switch)
Linux GUI app (bringing with it support for our censorship-resistant Stealth protocol)

To use it, simply select Proton Protocols in your beta app’s settings.

How to change your VPN protocols

If you run into any problems or have any suggestions on how things can be improved, please let us know on Reddit or X, or join our community at protonmail.uservoice.com.

Delivering a better VPN experience

This new VPN protocol codebase marks a major step forward for Proton VPN. By rebuilding our VPN core, we’re not just improving performance and reliability today — we’re creating a flexible foundation that lets us respond faster to censorship, ship features more consistently across platforms, and prepare for future threats like post-quantum cryptography.

If you’re eager to experience these improvements firsthand, try the experimental build on Android and please do let us know how it works for you on Reddit or X, or at protonmail.uservoice.com. Together, we’ll build a privacy-first internet that works for everyone.