Independent reporting and reviews on the consumer technology people actually use.
PRIVACY & SECURITY VERTICAL
Reporting on consumer-facing privacy, app data practices, breaches, end-to-end encryption, FTC privacy actions, and the regulatory frameworks that govern them.
WASHINGTON · JUN 19
State privacy laws now cover much of what fitness and nutrition apps collect, but a de-identification carve-out still lets logging data move to third-party brokers. Here is what regulators say and how users can opt out.
MOUNTAIN VIEW · MAY 15
The encrypted-messaging foundation on Thursday released a desktop and mobile client update that introduces automatic quarterly rotation of long-term identity keys, with no user-visible safety-number disruption. The change closes one of the protocol's longest-standing post-compromise recovery gaps, a Stanford cryptographer said.
SAN FRANCISCO · APR 15
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's 2026 fingerprinting survey found the practice on 78 percent of the Tranco top 10,000 websites, up from 61 percent in 2024 — a rise the foundation attributed largely to the post-cookie advertising stack.
GENEVA · MAR 25
The Geneva-based privacy company on Wednesday rolled out a substantially redesigned Proton Calendar across its Mail, Drive, and VPN customer base, with end-to-end encrypted event metadata and a new shared-calendar mode the company said does not break the encryption boundary.
TORONTO · FEB 23
The Toronto-based password manager said Monday it has shipped passkey synchronization for six of the ten largest U.S. retail banks, the most consequential financial-services rollout to date for the WebAuthn-based credential standard.
GOTHENBURG · FEB 3
The Swedish privacy-focused VPN provider said Tuesday it would discontinue its long-running cash-by-mail signup option, citing falling volume and rising compliance costs, even as it preserved the underlying anonymous account-number system.
VILNIUS · JAN 14
Nord Security, the parent company of NordVPN, said Wednesday it has acquired the password manager Passwarden from KeepSolid for an undisclosed sum, the latest move in a multi-year consolidation of consumer privacy tools.
REVIEW · BOSTON · FEB 26
Consumer Tech Wire's 2026 ranking of consumer password managers, scored on security architecture, audit cadence, cross-platform UX, sharing, and price. Six services tested across 60 days of family-and-individual use.
REVIEW · BOSTON · JAN 30
Consumer Tech Wire's 2026 ranking of consumer VPN services, scored on privacy posture, audit transparency, network speed, server breadth, and price. Seven services tested over 30 days across multiple jurisdictions.
ANALYSIS · LONDON · JAN 28
Mullvad's January policy change ended the anonymous-account trial that had been the gold standard for low-friction VPN evaluation. The decision is defensible on operational grounds and corrosive to the broader privacy-tooling ecosystem. Both can be true.
GUIDE · LONDON · FEB 14
A buyer's guide to picking a consumer VPN in 2026, organized around the seven evaluation criteria that actually predict whether the provider will protect what you think it is protecting.