Your phone isn’t secretly listening to you (at least in most cases). It's also not reading your thoughts...

The real reason ads feel that creepy? Honestly, it’s worse.

Let’s talk about how digital ad profiling actually works.

🧵👇

https://twitter.com/Nithya_Shrii/status/2034181467711148400

Platforms track what you do.

Every search, click, like, pause, scroll is logged, analyzed, and fed into systems designed to predict what you’ll do next.

This is not a conspiracy, it’s their business model.

1/4
Google has known about a bug that breaks VPN apps for 7 months, leaving users exposed with no warning or error, just a VPN app that stopped working in the background.

If you're using ANY VPN on Android, you can help us by getting Google's attention to fix it.

Details 👇 🧵 2/4
We first reported this bug to Google in September 2025.

Others like @mullvadnet and Wireguard reported it even earlier, in August.

Google's response? "I don't see anything unusual."

Here's what's actually happening ⤵️

Since the beginning of the year, we've notified @Google about fake Proton VPN extensions in their Chrome Web Store not once, but three times.

Bad actors are exploiting this, since Google takes several weeks before taking action, putting users at risk.

Here's how:🧵

1/5 Attackers exploit the trust users place in Proton by creating fake websites, apps, and browser extensions.

Their goal? Stealing login credentials, personal data, and internet traffic, possibly to relay it back to advertisers, or perhaps the Kremlin in this case. Every minute these fakes remain online is a security risk for hundreds of thousands of people.

2/5

We recently expanded the free plan with new server locations, with our latest addition being Norway.

Here’s what we’re working on this fall & winter to deliver a faster, lighter VPN while staying true to our mission of privacy, transparency, and freedom online.

1/6 ⬇️ 🌍 An even bigger free plan

Free users can now connect to 10 countries, with the latest additions being Mexico, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, and Singapore.

More options mean faster speeds, better access, and stronger privacy for everyone. For free, forever.

2/6 ⬇️

Does Discord delete your data after verifying your age?

Probably, and we hope so.

Do the vendors they outsource the additional checks and appeals to follow the same philosophy? Not at all.

1/5 On September 20th, one of Discord’s third-party customer support vendors was hacked.

Attackers gained access to user information, ranging from names, emails, and IP addresses, to the government ID images submitted during age verification appeals.

2/5

Chrome 🥀
Microsoft Edge 🥀
Opera 🥀

Here’s a list of browsers worth using in the big 2025:

1/5 Brave Browser:

Out-of-the-box fingerprint resistant ✅
Built-in ad & script blocking ✅
Comes with its own independent search engine ✅
Chromium-based (extensions carry over from Chrome) ✅

Based on Google’s code, including the closed-source "Safe Browsing" code ❌
Built-in ads ❌
Cryptocurrency features 🤷

2/5

Has YouTube started asking for your passport to watch videos? 🪪

YouTube is accessed by over 2.7bn people worldwide every month and hosts more than 800m videos.

Read on to learn how you can access video content, both on and off YouTube, without going through Google.

1/9 🧵👇 Invidious is a free and open-source YouTube alternative front end, designed to provide users with a more private way to view YouTube videos without ads or Google tracking.

✅ No need to install
✅ Open source
✅ Background play
✅ Channel subscription
✅ Playlist creation
✅ Doesn’t use Google APIs
✅ Audio-only mode
❌ No mobile apps
❌ Instance availability may vary
❌ No SponsorBlock support

2/9

Are you playing around with your new Grok AI girlfriend? You need to stop. Now.

While some don't have an issue with fictional relationships, using AI to fill that need is extremely dangerous, and it should not be normalized.

Here's why:

1/6 1️⃣ You’re not talking to a person.

You're interacting with a system trained to mimic emotional intimacy. Not to care, but to keep you engaged and extract as much data as possible.

2/6

Are you playing around with your new Grok AI girlfriend? You need to stop. Now.

While some don't have an issue with fictional relationships, using AI to fill that need is extremely dangerous, and it should not be normalized.

Here's why:

1/7
1️⃣ You’re not talking to a person.

You're interacting with a system trained to mimic emotional intimacy. Not to care, but to keep you engaged and extract as much data as possible.

2/7

You already know it’s bad, but Meta's AI app is an even bigger PRIVACY DISASTER than you'd think.

After asking Meta's AI a question, you are presented with a share button.

This publicly shares whatever you were discussing with the AI.

What?!

1/4 Regardless of what you're talking to the AI about, this is a privacy nightmare.

Meta doesn't remind users of their privacy settings when posting, so if your account is public, then all of your chats are also.

This raises the question: Who thought this was a good idea?

2/4

You can trust Google to keep your phone number secure, right? Right? WRONG.

A recent exploit, discovered by a cybersecurity researcher, demonstrated that it was possible to brute-force a phone number stored by Google.

Here’s how they did it...

1/5 A researcher discovered that it is possible to brute force a US phone number in 1 hour and a UK one in 8 minutes.

The relative lengths of the phone numbers explain the differences.

Attackers would need to first know a target's Google display name.

2/5

If you're buying stuff online, you're probably overpaying.

Using the web without protection comes at a huge cost to your personal privacy, but that's not the only price you pay.

Knowing who you are helps shopping sites to target you with what they think you can afford...

1/6 Have you ever gone to buy a flight online, only to find that the price has mysteriously increased the second time you've checked it?

This is surveillance pricing, which utilizes factors such as device type, location, browsing history, purchase behavior, and login status.

2/6

Bluetooth 6.1 has just been announced, and it could make your next phone more private.

Let's take a quick journey through how Bluetooth works now and how it might improve in the future.

1/6 With Bluetooth 6.0, your Resolvable Private Address (RPA), which helps facilitate Bluetooth connections, changes on a set timer.

By analogy, your phone is known as Bob for a minute, then Charles for a minute, then Dave for a minute, and on...

2/6

Are you a Proton VPN super user? We'll help you become one.

Here are the top 6 features that will supercharge your VPN game: Use Proton VPN effectively, even on a bad connection, with VPN Accelerator 👇

https://x.com/ProtonVPN/status/1920110916827300157

What's next for #ProtonVPN?

As part of our mission to make online privacy, security, and freedom the default for everyone, we're excited to share what's coming to Proton VPN this spring and summer:

⬇️ 1/7 NetShield gets an upgrade 🔒

We’re adding phishing protection to NetShield — it’ll now block DNS calls to known phishing domains, helping keep your browsing safer and more private.

⬇️ 2 / 8

Last week, our Windows app received a major UI/UX overhaul! 🪟

Today, we want to tell you all about what's new 👇🧵

1/6 The default home page of the app now shows you:

👀 At-a-glance protection status
📊 Connection details
🗺️ New, interactive map to show your connection location

2/6

Is your TV watching you? Spoiler: it probably is.

The streaming era has created endless quality content, but companies have turned to surveillance capitalism to make this profitable.

Let's examine how the black mirror became the all-seeing billboard.

1/8 Hardware, advertising, and the production of TV shows used to be undertaken by separate companies.

Under this arrangement, TVs were produced as standalone products, and adverts were put in the spaces between shows based on limited data.

That's not how things work now...

2/8

Researchers at Northeastern University recently published their findings about the ways in which the three biggest voice assistants - Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant - profile their users.

They found that Amazon, Apple and Google all behaved very differently.

1/7 To undertake this they designed an experiment which used the publicly-available information that Google puts together on Search users.

They used Google's labeling to design questions which would be profiled in particular ways, playing those questions to the assistants.

2/7

2024 was pivotal for Internet freedom. As authoritarian governments intensified censorship to manipulate public opinion, Proton VPN's anti-censorship services proved crucial.

🧵 The following thread explains our efforts to alleviate and circumvent censorship in 2024.

1/11 Roughly half of the global population across 64 countries voted in national elections.

We joined the fight for Internet freedom by providing additional free VPN servers in 21 countries for at least two weeks prior to and after election day.

2/11

What's coming this fall/winter for #ProtonVPN?

As part of our mission to help everyone access online privacy and freedom, we’ve been continuously evolving Proton VPN.

So far we brought you Windows stealth, Android guest mode, an Apple TV app, Linux IPv6, Business servers, and more.

⬇️ 1 / 7 ARM support for Windows 🪟

Ever since the introduction of Apple Silicon's M-series chips, Windows users have been impatiently asking for an equivalent.

In an effort to support those upgrading to ARM-based devices, we've now released a native ARM version of the Proton VPN Windows app.


⬇️ 2 / 7protonvpn.com/blog/windows-a…

1/6
#PortForwarding lets you:

1️⃣ Remotely access your home computer while away
2️⃣ Play games using P2P with your friends
3️⃣ Increase the speed of file-sharing

Though it may seem complex at first, setting this up is extremely simple, here's how 👇🧵 2/6
Each individual router has their own admin interface, and to get to it, you may have to look up the support page of your specific model. Usually, the default username and password is "admin" and "password" (you should change this).

Type 192.168.1.1 in browser and log in.