Meta will no longer allow teens to chat with its AI chatbot characters in their present form. The company announced Friday that it will be "temporarily pausing teens’ access to existing AI characters globally."

The pause comes months after Meta had said it was working on chatbot-focused parental controls following reports that some of Meta's character chatbots had engaged in sexual conversations and other alarming interactions with teens. Reuters reported on an internal Meta policy document that said the chatbots were permitted to have "sensual" conversations with underage users, language Meta later said was "erroneous and inconsistent with our policies." The company announced in August that it was re-training its character chatbots to add "guardrails as an extra precaution" that would prevent teens from discussing self harm, disordered eating and suicide. 

Now, Meta says it will prevent teens from accessing any of its character chatbots until "the updated experience is ready." Those updates will include parental controls, according to a Meta spokesperson. The new restrictions, which will be starting "in the coming weeks," will apply to those with teen accounts, "as well as people who claim to be adults but who we suspect are teens based on our age prediction technology." Teens will still be able to access the official Meta AI chatbot, which the company says already has "age-appropriate protections in place." 

Meta and other AI companies that make "companion" characters have faced increasing scrutiny over the safety risks these chatbots could pose to young people. The FTC and the Texas attorney general have both kicked off investigations into Meta and other companies in recent months. The issue of chatbots has also come up in the context of a safety lawsuit brought by New Mexico's attorney general. A trial is scheduled to start early next month; Meta's lawyers have attempted to exclude testimony related to the company's AI chatbots, Wired reported this week.

Correction, January 23, 2026, 11:18AM PT: This post was updated to clarify that Meta’s planned chatbot parental control features have not yet rolled out.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-is-temporarily-pulling-teens-access-from-its-ai-chatbot-characters-180626052.html?src=rss

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1Password has a new tool designed to counteract the advantages AI has given to phishing scammers. A new feature for the company's browser extension gives you a "second pair of eyes" to help you catch a bogus website before entering your login info.

Before AI, phishing attempts often included telltale signs like obvious typos or rudimentary graphic design. Now that AI makes it much easier to design and code convincingly, scams are on the rise. According to Fortune, 60 percent of companies reported an increase in fraud-related losses from 2024 to 2025. And the advent of AI browsers could make things even worse.

“Our new phishing feature adds an extra layer of protection,” 1Password says. Once the feature is activated, the extension actively watches for suspicious sign-ins. To be clear, even before this feature's arrival, 1Password wouldn't autofill saved credentials for a bogus website impersonating it. But that still left room for people to manually paste their login info, handing it over to those with the worst intentions.

That moment when you try to paste your login manually is where the new feature comes in. "The website you're on isn't linked to a login in 1Password," the feature's warning pop-up reads. "Make sure you trust this site before continuing."

1Password says that's the "breakthrough" moment that can help you avoid a major hassle. "That single moment of pause, that tiny bit of friction, is often all it takes to disrupt the attackers' entire plan."

The new feature is available today. You can enable it in the 1Password browser extension's settings. Under the Notifications section, activate the setting for "Warn about pasted logins on non-linked websites."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/1password-adds-an-extra-layer-of-phishing-protection-140000293.html?src=rss

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One of the disconcerting things about using a virtual private network (VPN) is that it can be hard to tell when it's doing its job. The best VPNs all work in the background to keep your IP address hidden and your communications with their servers encrypted. The better the VPN, the less you notice it, which can make a top-performing VPN feel (uncomfortably) like one that isn't working at all.

Luckily, you've got options for checking whether your VPN is working — other than just taking the app at its word. In this article, I'll cover the basics, then go through five different tests you can run to make sure you're actually using an encrypted VPN server. For each test, I'll explain what kind of problem it's looking for, how to run it and what to do in case it fails.

Make sure your VPN is turned on

Before you do anything else, though, it's not a bad idea to check your VPN app and make sure you remembered to connect. It's all too easy to open up the client app, choose a server, tweak some preferences and feel like your work is done. On top of that, we don't always remember to tell VPN beginners that simply opening the client isn't enough.

To check that your VPN is turned on, open the app on your desktop or mobile home screen. Each VPN designs its apps differently, but common signs include the color green, the word Connected and information on what server location you're connected to.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

If you don't see anything like that, click the On button, which should be on the first page that appears when you log into the app. Most VPNs also connect whenever you click the name of a server location.

For those of you on iPhone or iPad, I've just written an explainer on how to turn a VPN off and on. For all the tests I'll discuss across the rest of this article, make sure you're connected to a VPN server before you run them. Also, make sure your internet connection is active — a VPN can only work when there's internet.

5 tests to check if your VPN works

Each of these tests investigates a different reason your VPN might not be working. We'll start by looking for connection problems that might not be obvious, check for DNS leaks, WebRTC leaks and IPv6 leaks, then finally make sure an apparently active VPN is managing to change your virtual location.

1. Has your IP address changed?

Websites and internet service providers (ISPs) use IP addresses to identify devices and their owners online. A VPN's most important job is to change your IP address to one matching its own server, which disassociates your identity from your online activities. Not doing this indicates a failure on a fundamental level: either the VPN says it's connected when it isn't, or its technology is active but somehow not sending you through the proper encrypted tunnel.

To check whether your VPN has changed your IP address, start by going to an IP address checker like whatismyipaddress.com or ipleak.net. This will show you the public IP address that everyone sees when you get online without a VPN, including the ISP that holds it and the geographic location it's associated with. Write that down or take a screenshot.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

Next, connect to your VPN. Remember the location you connect to, and note down the new server IP address if the VPN tells you what it is. Go back to your IP tester tool and refresh the page. You should now see an IP address and location that match the one you connected to through the VPN, including a different ISP.

If your IP address is the same as before, your VPN isn't working. To fix this, try disconnecting from the server, waiting about 10 seconds, then connecting to the same location and trying the test again. This will show you whether the problem was with one individual server or an entire location.

If the problem persists, try a different server location, then a different VPN protocol. If it's still leaking, try restarting your VPN client, your device and your modem (in that order). This should fix the problem, but if it doesn't, move on to the remaining tests or get in touch with the VPN's tech support.

2. Are you leaking DNS requests?

A domain name system (DNS) server is an important step in getting a website to appear on your browser. DNS holds the information that connects URLs to the IP addresses of destination servers. If a VPN client lets your device contact a DNS server owned by your internet service provider without routing it through an encrypted tunnel first, the DNS request might reveal your real IP address to the ISP.

You can check for DNS leaks by connecting to your VPN, then going to dnsleaktest.com or another tool of your choice. The tester sends several innocuous DNS requests, then scans to see which servers resolve them. If you see your real ISP at all, you've got DNS leaks.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

The fix for DNS leaks is more intensive than the fixes in step #1. Check your VPN's control panel to activate any DNS leak protections and try again. IPv6 leaks can also appear as DNS leaks, so try disabling IPv6 in your browser (see #4 below for instructions). If you keep seeing leaks, you can also try clearing your computer's DNS cache.

Here's how to do that. On Windows, go to the Command Prompt (on Windows 10) or the Windows Terminal (on Windows 11). Enter the phrase ipconfig/flushdns. On Mac, open Terminal from the Utilities folder, then paste in the phrase sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder and hit Enter. Test the VPN once more to see if it's still leaking.

3. Are you leaking information through WebRTC?

WebRTC, which stands for Web Real-Time Communication, is a technology that lets browsers exchange information directly with each other. This is useful for text and video chats, streaming and more, but it's also a potential security risk. WebRTC can serve as a backchannel that inadvertently sends your real IP address outside the VPN tunnel.

It's pretty easy to test for WebRTC leaks. I recommend the tool ipleak.net, which checks for them as a matter of course. You can also use browserleaks.com/webrtc to run a test that's particular to this kind of leak. These tools establish dummy connections through WebRTC, then test to see if the VPN still works when they're active. As usual, if you see your real IP address, there's a problem.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

The fixes for a WebRTC leak are the usual ones: try different servers, locations and protocols, reset your VPN, device and modem, then try another VPN provider. However, if nothing is working, you can also disable WebRTC on your browser altogether. This means you won't be able to do any real-time chatting (that's Zoom, Google Meet, Teams and so on), so it's a last-resort solution.

To disable WebRTC on Firefox, type about:config in the URL bar, click the message to accept the risk, type media.peerconnection.enabled in the search bar, then double-click the word True to change it to False. To turn WebRTC back on, just double-click False again.

On Edge, you can disable WebRTC by entering edge://flags in the URL bar, scrolling down to the option "Anonymize local IPs exposed by WebRTC" and making sure the dropdown next to it is set to Enable. There's no built-in way to turn off WebRTC on Chrome, but you can install the WebRTC Control extension to switch it off and on yourself.

4. Is your IPv6 address leaking?

Next up, it's possible that your real location is leaking through your IPv6 address, not IPv4. To make a long explanation short, IPv6 is a new way of formatting IP addresses that leaves more options available for the future. Since we haven't yet hit the crisis point of IPv4 shortage, very few websites are restricted to IPv6 alone.

The problem is that most VPN apps were designed in the IPv4 era and aren't built to protect IPv6 traffic. There are some exceptions, including NordVPN, but most VPNs block IPv6 traffic completely rather than retrofit themselves to work with it. However, if a VPN of that sort isn't blocking IPv6 entirely, your IPv6 address and associated location can leak.

Any IP address checker can reveal an IPv6 leak, but you can find a specific test at test-ipv6.com. This site runs several exams that look for IPv6 readiness, but the most important line is the one that shows your current IPv6 address. This will probably say you don't have one, since most ISPs don't work through IPv6 yet — but if you do have one, it should match your active VPN's location, not your real one.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

Should it turn out that you're leaking IPv6 requests, the easiest solution is to disable IPv6 on your computer. On Windows, you can do this through the network adapter options page of your control panel. Here's how to get there:

• Windows 10: Start -> Settings -> Network & internet -> Status -> Change -> Advanced network settings -> Change adapter options.

• Windows 11: Settings app -> Network & internet -> Advanced network settings -> Related settings -> More network adapter options.

On both OSes, finish the job by right-clicking the name of your internet connection, selecting Properties from the dropdown and unchecking the box next to Internet Protocol Version 6. Of course, you can always switch to another VPN that blocks IPv6 altogether, but you might find that to be a bigger hassle.

If you're on Mac, open System Settings, click the Network tab and then click the Details... button next to your network name. In the new window, click the TCP/IP tab on the left, find the entry labeled Configure IPv6 and set the dropdown to Link-Local Only.

5. Do streaming sites show different content?

A VPN can be working perfectly and still fail to unblock streaming sites. Netflix, HBO Max and the others block VPN traffic because VPNs can make them show material in regions where they don't hold the copyright. To avoid legal trouble, they set up their firewalls to block IP addresses known to belong to VPN servers.

If your VPN can't get into a streaming platform, it'll usually be obvious; the site will either display a proxy error message or simply refuse to load. However, in rare cases, the streaming site will load fine but show you the same shows you normally see. This indicates that you might be dealing with a VPN leak.

If that happens, follow the usual steps. Disconnect and reconnect to the same location to get a different server, then try different server locations. It's also possible that the streaming site is getting your real location from your browser cache, so if the problem persists, clear your cache and cookies and try again.

How to test a VPN kill switch

There's one more important step to make sure your VPN is working: test the kill switch. This common feature cuts off your internet connection if you lose touch with your VPN server. With your kill switch active, you shouldn't be at any risk of accidentally broadcasting your real IP address, location or online activity.

To test your kill switch, you'll need to simulate an abrupt loss of VPN connectivity. Open your VPN, make sure the kill switch is turned on, then connect to a server. Next, quit the VPN app without disconnecting. At this point, the kill switch should make it impossible for you to get online — if you can still browse the internet as normal, the switch might be faulty.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/how-to-check-if-your-vpn-is-working-130000817.html?src=rss

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The Federal Trade Commission lost its antitrust case against Meta last year, but the regulator hasn't given up on its attempts to punish the social media company for its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. The FTC is appealing a ruling last year in which a federal judge found that the government hadn't proven that Meta is currently operating as a monopoly. 

"Meta has maintained its dominant position and record profits for well over a decade not through legitimate competition, but by buying its most significant competitive threats," the FTC's Bureau of Competition Director Daniel Guarnera said in a statement. "The Trump-Vance FTC will continue fighting its historic case against Meta to ensure that competition can thrive across the country to the benefit of all Americans and U.S. businesses.”

The FTC originally filed antitrust charges against Facebook in 2020 during President Donald Trump's first term in office. The government argued that by acquiring apps it once competed with, Instagram and WhatsApp, the company had depressed competition in the space and ultimately hurt consumers. A trial last year saw testimony from several current and former executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg, who spoke at length about the pressure to compete with TikTok. 

US District Judge James Boasberg was ultimately persuaded by Meta’s arguments, writing that the success of YouTube and TikTok prevented Meta from currently "holding a monopoly" even if the company had acted monopolistically in the past. If the FTC had won, it could have tried to force Meta to undo its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. Should it be successful in its appeal, that remedy could once again be on the table.

News of the FTC's plan to appeal is also a blow to Zuckerberg, who has spent the last year courting Trump and hyping Meta's plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure in the United States. In a statement, Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said that the original ruling was "correct," and that "Meta will remain focused on innovating and investing in America."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/the-ftc-isnt-giving-up-on-its-antitrust-case-against-meta-225020769.html?src=rss

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CyberGhost is the middle child of the Kape Technologies VPN portfolio, but in quality, it's much closer to ExpressVPN than Private Internet Access. I mainly put it on my best VPN list because it's so cheap, but I wouldn't have done that if it didn't earn its place in other ways — affordable crap is still crap, after all.

My universal impression of CyberGhost is a VPN that's not perfect but is always genuinely working to make itself better. It makes decisions based on what will help its users, not to set itself apart in a crowded market. This makes it similar to a lot of other VPNs, but that's not a bad thing — especially at such a low price.

Other than its price, the best things about CyberGhost are its intuitive app design, its frictionless user experience and the super-low latencies that make it an ideal pick for gamers. Download speeds are great up close but middling far away. While I love how many servers it's got in Africa and South America, a few too many of them are virtual locations. I'll get into all this and more in the review; feel free to read straight through or use the contents table to find the area that interests you most.

Editor's note (1/16/26): We've overhauled our VPN coverage to provide more detailed, actionable buying advice. Going forward, we'll continue to update both our best VPN list and individual reviews (like this one) as circumstances change. Most recently, we added official scores to all of our VPN reviews. Check out how we test VPNs to learn more about the new standards we're using.

Findings at a glance

Category	Notes
Installation and UI	Windows app has more options and the most sensible organization macOS app is very easy to use, but a bit lacking compared to Windows Android and iOS both have simple main pages and slightly confusing preferences No browser extensions (free proxy doesn't count)
Speed	Excellent latency tests, with ping times short enough to lead the VPN field Great download and upload speeds on close-in servers Distant servers lag somewhat on both upload and download, bringing down the worldwide average
Security	Uses WireGuard, IKEv2 and OpenVPN protocols, but they aren't all supported on all platforms Blocks IPv6 and prevents WebRTC and DNS leaks Disconnects when switching servers
Pricing	$12.99 per month $41.94 for 6 months ($6.99 per month) $56.94 for 28 months ($2.03 per month), renewing at the same price for 12 months ($4.79 per month) Seven simultaneous connections
Bundles	Dedicated IP address for $2.50 per month
Privacy policy	Anonymizes all personal data Can share data with other Kape subsidiaries, but only if they're based in areas with good privacy laws RAM-only servers and full-disk encryption confirmed by audit Has never given information to police
Virtual location change	Unblocked Netflix perfectly in five different regions using streaming-optimized servers and WireGuard
Server network	125 server locations in 100 countries Good global distribution, with nine locations in South America and six in Africa However, most servers in the southern hemisphere are virtual locations that may not give the best speeds
Features	Kill switch cannot be turned off except on Windows Split tunneling by app on Android and by URL on Windows Content blocker can only be turned on or off, no customization Large network of torrent-optimized servers and streaming servers Smart Rules automation is both user-friendly and deep
Customer support	Online help pages are well-written but poorly organized Live chat responds quickly; there is a bot but it's easy to get past Can also submit email tickets through an online portal
Background check	Founded in 2011 and based in Romania Acquired by Kape Technologies in 2017

Installing, configuring and using CyberGhost

CyberGhost gets installation and UI largely right. There are no needless hurdles in the setup process. All its app designs put the important controls front and center and don't overload you with needless information. I've broken up my thoughts by platform, as CyberGhost is pretty different depending on where you use it.

Windows

CyberGhost downloads and installs amazingly fast on Windows 11. I didn't even have to grant any permissions. I just opened the .exe, clicked through a licensing agreement and logged into the desktop client. It took about two minutes end-to-end, including time I spent digging around in my password vault.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

Once inside, you're greeted with a UI that looks an awful lot like Surfshark — and if it's not broken, don't fix it. Options for special servers are on the left, the server list is in the middle and the connection interface is on the right. The arrangement prioritizes the most important controls and keeps clutter to a minimum. The only thing I can find to complain about is that clicking on a country with multiple locations doesn't open the menu to choose between them; instead, you have to click on a hard-to-see arrow to the right of the name.

To access any of the special servers, click the appropriate tab in the left window, then choose from the list. Everything connects quickly. A gear icon at the bottom-left leads to all the special features and options, organized into three tabs: General (to do with the VPN app itself), CyberGhost VPN (to do with the VPN connection) and Account (to do with your subscription). The names could be better, but I can't argue with the clear and useful descriptions on each feature.

Mac

The download process on macOS Sequoia is as easy as it is on Windows 11. CyberGhost walks you through every step, installs its helper tools with minimal fuss and is ready to go out of the box. It's best to download directly from cyberghostvpn.com, since the App Store version is designed for iPads, not desktop computers.

Right after launching, the Mac app is pinned to the taskbar. To open it as a separate window, click the arrow button at the top-left. While it's in the taskbar, the only things you can do are connect, disconnect and switch to one of your favorite locations. You can do all that from the standalone window, too, so there's not much reason to ever leave it pinned.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

The interface on Mac differs from the Windows client in other noticeable ways. For one thing, it's permanently in dark mode, whereas Windows users get to choose between light and dark. There are fewer categories of servers in the left-hand column, with only torrenting (called For Downloading) and streaming options available — you can still connect to NoSpy, but only by going to the Romania location on the main list.

Also, the control panel gear is in the exact opposite location, sitting at the top-right of the connection window. The organization of options is also completely different and generally not as useful, with all the actual controls crammed into a single General tab.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

Compounding the sense that CyberGhost didn't give its Mac app as much attention as its Windows app, I kept getting the odd error pictured in the screenshot above. The client would tell me I had no internet connection (my internet was fine) and direct me to run a connection test. This would always turn up all green lights and let me connect without any incident. It rarely tripped me up for more than a moment, but it was still bizarre.

Android

CyberGhost on Android is streamlined to the extreme, focusing on ease of use above all else. Connections happen quickly, and the server selection is narrowed down, with only the streaming locations getting their own tab. It's nice, but it does sometimes remind me of when I'd clean my room by shoving all the clutter under the bed.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

That's mainly because tapping the gear at the top-right opens up a preferences menu with a lot more going on than the main screen. Most of the options here aren't too complicated, but the shift is still jarring, especially since Android doesn't do as well as Windows at explaining what everything does. "Anonymous statistics" and "Share network data for troubleshooting" sound like the same thing to me, and we get nothing on the esoteric concept of Domain Fronting.

Still, I'm nitpicking a bit. CyberGhost's Android client does 95 percent of its job very well. Most of the settings aren't necessary anyway, so you can pick your favorite server and be on your way.

iOS

Much like its Android app, CyberGhost's iOS offering is sleek on the front end, a little cluttered in the back, but overall quite easy to use. Connections happen within seconds. The main page includes a useful option to tap on your current Wi-Fi network and immediately set Smart Rules for it. As with Android, only streaming-optimized servers and favorites are separated from the rest.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

The control panel also looks very similar to what you get on mobile. The apparent clutter comes from simple on-off toggles and more complex submenus being all jumbled up together, but you can use the VPN just fine without engaging with any of it. For the most part, CyberGhost on iOS does a lot to help you and nothing to get in your way.

Browser extensions

CyberGhost doesn't have a full-service browser extension. If you look for an extension link on the download hub, you won't find anything. What it does have is free proxy add-ons for Chrome and Firefox, which can be used to change your IP address to a new location.

However, proxies do not encrypt your traffic, leaving out one of the critical aspects of how a VPN works. The extension library pages for the CyberGhost proxies are vague about this, but they're no substitute for a full VPN. They're free and may be convenient for occasional streaming if they don't get caught, but they aren't secure.

CyberGhost speed test

I conducted all these tests on a wireless connection using the WireGuard protocol. For each, I selected either a physical server or a virtual location close to its physical source. Here's what each metric means in the table below:

• Ping, measured in milliseconds (ms), is a measure of latency — how long it takes to send a signal from your device to its destination via the VPN server. Lower pings are better. Since signals can only move so quickly, latency tends to increase with distance.

• Download speed, measured in megabits per second (Mbps), is what you probably think of as "internet speed" — how fast websites load and how much video you can stream without any pause to load.

• Upload speed, also measured in Mbps, determines the rate at which data travels from your device to its destination. It's useful for posting content, saving files to the cloud, torrenting and two-way video calls.

Server location	Ping (ms)	Increase factor	Download speed (Mbps)	Percentage drop	Upload speed (Mbps)	Percentage drop
Portland, USA (unprotected)	16	—	58.70	—	5.80	—
Seattle, USA (fastest location)	22	1.4x	55.88	4.8	5.60	3.4
New York, USA	155	9.7x	45.43	22.6	5.43	6.4
Montevideo, Uruguay	111	6.9x	46.25	21.2	5.55	4.3
Lisbon, Portugal	328	20.5x	45.60	22.3	4.36	24.8
Johannesburg, South Africa	632	39.5x	34.12	41.9	3.68	36.6
Vientiane, Laos	350	21.9x	38.04	35.2	4.78	17.6
Average	266	16.6x	44.22	24.7	4.90	15.5

CyberGhost's speed test gave me mixed results — mostly good, but with some reasons for caution. To start on the positive side, latency results were excellent. No matter where I went in the world, the numbers only jumped above 400 milliseconds in one place, and that was the Johannesburg server that had problems across the board. CyberGhost's 266 average is significantly better than I got when testing Surfshark, currently the fastest VPN overall.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

Download and upload speeds looked good in my fastest location, Seattle. Using CyberGhost only slowed my browsing by 4.8 percent and dropped my upload rates by 3.4 percent, comparable to most of its leading competitors. At a distance, though, speeds started to falter. Things in New York remained reasonably fast, but with a lot of fluctuation between tests; unlike Seattle, numbers swung between the 30s and 50s.

As I virtually traveled the world, I saw more and more swings, plus sharp declines in South Africa (which is always the problem child of VPN servers, for some reason). To put this in perspective, CyberGhost never dragged that much on my browsing speed, and the internet remained usable no matter where I went. It's just slightly more sluggish than my favorite VPNs in every area — except latency, where it soars ahead.

CyberGhost security test

VPNs need to secure your internet activity against two things: intentional attacks and leaks due to negligence. A VPN should be watertight enough that it never lets your information slip by accident, while also defending your data against outside interference.

It's not hard to test whether a provider is meeting these two criteria. First, make sure it's using safe VPN protocols with modern encryption. Second, use an IP address checker to test for DNS, WebRTC and IPv6 leaks. Third, test encryption itself to ensure it's being applied equally to all data packets. Let's get started.

VPN protocols

CyberGhost supports three different VPN protocols, all of them up-to-date and secure. OpenVPN, available on Windows, Android, Linux and Fire TV, is my typical recommendation, balanced and secured through a multi-decade history of refinement. WireGuard, supported on every platform, is the new hotshot on the block, fast and stable but not quite as rigorously tested as OpenVPN. IKEv2, which works on macOS, iOS and Windows, connects more quickly than the others but isn't open-source.

I have some quibbles about how available these protocols are. OpenVPN should always be an option for everybody; leaving it off Apple devices doesn't make sense. I’ve asked CyberGhost about this and will update here when I get a reply. In the meantime, I can't complain about the protocols themselves, which use uncracked encryption ciphers and present no obvious weak points.

Leak test

I used ipleak.net to check CyberGhost for leaks. There are three likely causes for a VPN to accidentally reveal your real IP address: it failed to account for different IP types (IPv6 leak), a real-time connection went outside the encrypted tunnel (WebRTC leak) or it used a domain name server that an ISP could read (DNS leak).

Sam Chapman for Engadget

CyberGhost blocks all IPv6 traffic, so there's no chance of an IPv6 leak. I checked for WebRTC leaks and didn't find any. Likewise, every time I connected to a VPN server and refreshed the page, I saw that server's IP address, proving that CyberGhost isn't leaking.

There is one important exception here: whenever you select a different server on your CyberGhost client, it disconnects from that server before connecting to the next one. This means that your data is exposed during the transition. It's annoying, but as long as you remember not to do anything risky while changing locations, you'll be fine.

Encryption test

For my final test, I used WireShark to capture images of the data packets CyberGhost was routing from my device to its servers. Sure enough, the outer layer of each data stream was encrypted no matter which VPN protocol I used. Ultimately, all my probing showed that CyberGhost is secure against both negligence and interference.

How much does CyberGhost cost?

CyberGhost sells three different subscriptions, all of them with the same features. The only difference is how long the plan lasts. You can save money overall by signing up for six months or two years at a time, but it costs more upfront. Each plan can be used on seven devices simultaneously.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

One month of CyberGhost costs $12.99, and it renews automatically at the same price at the end of each billing month. Each monthly renewal comes with a 14-day, money-back guarantee. You can get six months for $41.94 total, which works out to $6.99 per month. At the end of six months, it auto-renews at the same price. The six-month plan comes with a 45-day refund guarantee.

Finally, there's the two-year plan, which comes with a lot of fine print. The first time you sign up, it costs $56.94, which gets you a total of 28 months (working out to $2.03 per month). However, after your 28 months are up, all subsequent renewals instead get you a 12-month plan — still for $56.94, but now working out to $4.79 per month. That's still relatively cheap, but not nearly as affordable as some VPNs with perpetual two-year plans.

CyberGhost side apps and bundles

CyberGhost doesn't have much in the way of additional subscription offers, but that's honestly refreshing. In an age when even the best providers also need to be antiviruses, insurance agents and probably vacuum cleaners, it's nice to see a VPN that's content with just being a VPN.

CyberGhost does have a broader "security suite," but it comes at no extra cost and is currently available on Windows only. More info on that in the "Extra features" section below.

Dedicated IP

You can pay an extra $2.50 per month to add a dedicated IP address to your CyberGhost plan. With a dedicated IP, you'll have a stable address whenever you get online through the VPN, which makes it a lot easier to connect to firewall-protected web services. It's also exclusive, so nobody else can get you in trouble by misusing the IP address.

Close-reading CyberGhost's privacy policy

CyberGhost is located in Romania, which makes it subject to the strict privacy laws of the European Union. It's not legally required to keep tabs on its users or install government backdoors. That's a great start, but to be certain about a company's approach to privacy, it's best to look at its own words.

A VPN makes your online activity anonymous to anyone else who tries to look at it, but the VPN itself still has the power to violate your privacy if it chooses. This leads some people to advise against using commercial VPN services at all, though I don't go that far. The best VPNs build in features that make it impossible for them to abuse their access to your web traffic, such as RAM-only servers and full-disk encryption.

When trying to determine if you can trust a VPN with your privacy, the first place to look is its official privacy policy. This document lays out everything the VPN does to handle your personally identifiable information (PII). If the provider violates its policy, they can be sued, so it's not in their interest to lie outright in the document.

I went over CyberGhost's privacy policy with a fine-toothed comb — it can be found here if you'd like to follow along. It starts with the usual promise of "uncompromising protection": CyberGhost swears that "we are NOT storing connection logs, meaning that we DON'T have any logs tied to your IP address, connection timestamp or session duration" (all emphasis theirs).

That's the standard I'll be checking against: a total lack of any way for CyberGhost to read or share information on its own users. Let's see how it holds up.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

The privacy policy wins early points by clarifying all the data it collects. You can see the whole quote in the screenshot above, but to summarize, any PII (like your email or IP address) will never be connected with anything you do online. Since absolute anonymity is impossible, this is the best we can hope for from a VPN.

Later on, the policy clarifies everything CyberGhost might do with personal data, none of which involves turning it over to authorities or selling it to advertisers. The most suspicious reasons given are "fraud detection/prevention" and "To enforce the terms of service," but these both relate to kicking users off CyberGhost itself, not tattling on them to the government.

The only potential problem comes in the section titled "Sharing Your Personal Data." Here, CyberGhost states that "we may communicate your personal data to a member of our group of companies," meaning all subsidiaries of Kape Technologies. I won't rehash the case against Kape in full — my ExpressVPN review covers it in detail.

Suffice to say the only real risk here is that CyberGhost might share PII with another Kape company located in a region with worse privacy laws than Romania or the EU. To me, this isn't a serious concern. First of all, Kape doesn't own any companies based in truly anti-privacy nations like China, India or Russia.

Moreover, the privacy policy states that CyberGhost won't share information with any entity not "located in the EU or another jurisdiction offering equivalent data protection standards." Every bit of data gets the same protections. This may mean PII enters a country in the Five/Nine/14 Eyes alliance, but the Eyes only matter if a VPN is already logging data it shouldn't have. It's not that abuse of intelligence-sharing agreements isn't a problem; it's just that the risk it poses starts with the VPN itself, not where it's located.

To sum up, I didn't see any red flags or loopholes in the CyberGhost privacy policy. Some clauses could be tightened up, and it always pays to be suspicious, but I'm confident that using this VPN doesn't risk your personal privacy.

Independent corroboration

CyberGhost has been audited twice by Deloitte Romania, once in 2022 and again in 2024. Following that pattern, I'll be looking out for another one this year. You need an account to read the full audit report, but it's only 10 pages and easy to summarize: the auditors found nothing in CyberGhost's systems that conflicted with its privacy policy.

The audit notes CyberGhost's server infrastructure as evidence. All servers are run on RAM with full-disk encryption, making any information they store completely ephemeral. Even if CyberGhost staff wanted to spy on you, they wouldn't see anything. The same goes for third-party hackers.

CyberGhost also posts a regular transparency report that lists how often law enforcement has asked it for information. As far as I could find, after hundreds of requests, there's never been a case where CyberGhost provided any information to cops.

Can CyberGhost change your virtual location?

For this section, I used Netflix to test whether CyberGhost's virtual location changes are detectable by other websites. Ideally, every time I change location with CyberGhost, Netflix would accept it as real and show me the content library from that country. If either of those things doesn't happen within three tests, the VPN has a problem.

Since CyberGhost has servers built for streaming, I used those for each of the five locations. You can see my results below.

Server location	Unblocked Netflix?	Changed content?
United Kingdom	3/3	3/3
Japan	3/3	3/3
Germany	3/3	3/3
Australia	3/3	3/3
Brazil	3/3	3/3

This test was a smashing success for CyberGhost. Every time, it showed me the proper video library for the location I chose and never once got caught by Netflix's firewalls. It's the best result I've seen in this section since I tested Proton VPN, and that's high praise if you know me.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

Investigating CyberGhost's server network

CyberGhost has 125 server locations in 100 countries. Of those locations, 75 are real and 50 are virtual, which makes the math easy: CyberGhost's VPN server network is 60 percent bare-metal and 40 percent virtual. That's good, since physical servers let you calculate how much performance will deteriorate over distance — virtual servers are just as safe, but speeds might fluctuate depending on where they really are.

Region	Countries with servers	Total server locations	Virtual server locations
North America	9	21	5
South America	9	9	9
Europe	45	56	13
Africa	6	6	3
Middle East	6	6	4
Asia	23	23	16
Oceania	2	4	0
Total	100	125	50

Looking at the distribution of servers, we get good news and bad news. The good news is that there really are 100 different countries and territories to choose from, encompassing nearly all the virtual globetrotting you're likely to need. There are also lots of servers in the southern hemisphere, which is often the last place VPNs grow into. There's a wealth of choices in South America, plus several options in Africa and Central Asia.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

The bad news is that the distribution of real servers is skewed toward Europe and the United States. None of the nine South American servers are actually located in South America; worse, a large number of them are physically located in Miami. If you're using CyberGhost in Argentina, don't expect top speeds from the Buenos Aires server, since it's actually over 4,000 miles away. CyberGhost's support center does include a list of where the virtual servers are relayed through, but it's not up to date.

Extra features of CyberGhost

CyberGhost has a few features beyond the VPN itself, though not as many as you might think. Compared to a provider like NordVPN, which goes all in on extra features, CyberGhost's offerings look pretty lean. But that doesn't matter as much if the features work well. Let's see how they do.

Kill switch

CyberGhost takes an unusual approach to its kill switch. In case you aren't familiar with the term, a kill switch cuts off your internet connection if your link to the VPN ever drops, protecting your anonymity in case of unexpected incidents. Most VPNs let you toggle the kill switch on and off, but on CyberGhost, it's fully engaged 100 percent of the time — except on Windows, where you can turn it on and off as desired.

Turning on the kill switch is almost always a good idea, but it's still annoying that Cyberghost gives many of its users no way to turn it off. In rare cases, kill switches can get overzealous, preventing you from getting online even when conditions are safe. It's an odd choice to remove a potential troubleshooting step from the user's control.

Split tunneling

Split tunneling lets you name some apps or websites that will run unprotected even while the VPN is active. This can help with certain services that refuse to work if they detect a VPN, or alternatively, can protect only one sensitive app or site while the others enjoy faster unprotected speeds.

CyberGhost only has full split tunneling on Android. It also offers a slightly different feature called Exceptions on Windows. Android split tunneling works by app, while Exceptions works by URL. In both cases, you choose individual apps or websites to leave out of the VPN. It's limited, but works as advertised.

Optimized servers

As I mentioned in the Netflix testing section, CyberGhost includes specialized servers designed for specific tasks. Other than the add-on dedicated IP servers, these come in four forms: "For gaming," "For torrenting," "For streaming" and "NoSpy." Gaming servers are apparently built to keep latency low, but I couldn't see much difference between them and the normal servers.

"For torrenting" is called "For downloading" on Mac, but it's all the same torrent-optimized servers. These are built to meet the download and upload speed requirements for effectively using P2P filesharing clients. CyberGhost has P2P servers in 86 countries, which makes it a good VPN for torrenting; only the lack of port forwarding keeps it from being truly great.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

Each streaming server is built to unblock a specific streaming site in a particular country, occasionally for a single type of device. For example, United States streaming servers are aimed at Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video and more, many in their Android or Smart TV forms. UK servers work for Netflix UK, BBC iPlayer, ITV and more. In total, there are 106 streaming servers in 22 countries — not quite as extensive as the overall list, but it's important to remember that non-optimized servers still work fine for streaming.

Finally, the NoSpy options connect to a set of servers in Romania that CyberGhost claims to manage entirely in-house, with nobody able to access them except CyberGhost's own team. This is good, but it leaves me suspicious about who's running the rest of the servers. Are they all run by third parties except the NoSpy locations? That's relatively common, but it creates vulnerabilities if the VPN provider doesn't insist on high standards from collaborators.

Content blocker

CyberGhost's content blocker is underwhelming. All you can do is turn it on and off. There's no customization like you get with Windscribe's R.O.B.E.R.T. and no clear statement of where it's getting its list of domains to block. In practice, it does block in-page ads, but without specifics I couldn't test it in more detail.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

Smart Rules

The Smart Rules automation suite is the crown jewel of CyberGhost's features and the most common reason I recommend it. Using Smart Rules, you can automate CyberGhost's behavior to a degree inconceivable on most other VPNs.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

Smart Rules come in two forms: actions performed automatically when CyberGhost launches or connects and actions that respond to new Wi-Fi networks. In the former category, you can set CyberGhost to connect when you open the app, determine which location it connects to and even set an app to automatically open after it connects.

Wi-Fi rules depend on whether the network CyberGhost detects is secured or not. For each type of network, you can set the VPN to connect, disconnect, ask you what to do or ignore it entirely. Once it recognizes a Wi-Fi network, you can set specific rules for that network. It's at once very easy to use and capable of surprising depth.

CyberGhost customer support options

CyberGhost primarily offers customer assistance through its online portal, which can be reached at support.cyberghostvpn.com or by going through the app. If you choose the options "CyberGhost VPN help" or "FAQ" in the app settings, you'll be taken to the support pages in a browser. I recommend going through the URL, since that takes you to the highest-level page.

The support center feels distressingly like an afterthought. Written guides are divided into four sections: Guides, Troubleshooting, FAQs and Announcements. The latter has only one article and the former three are roughly interchangeable — if I'm having trouble connecting to a server, is that an FAQ, a Guide or Troubleshooting? Looking for any particular subject here is a needle-in-a-haystack search.

Fortunately, there is a search bar, but this presents its own problems. A simple search for "connection issues macos" turned up 72 results, including one called "Troubleshooting connectivity on macOS" and another titled "Troubleshooting VPN connection on mac." These two articles are in different sections, but mostly contain the same information, except that the former has an extra walkthrough on renewing your DHCP lease.

It's a shame, because the articles themselves are mostly clear and helpful, with lots of well-chosen screenshots. Someone clearly worked hard on the content, but the overall organization left me thinking the knowledgebase was thrown together years ago and hasn't been checked since.

Live support experience

If you have trouble finding what you need in the written guides, you can get personal support in two ways. One option is to submit an email request through a Zendesk portal. This gives you all the time you need to frame your question and add supporting materials, at the cost of waiting longer for a reply.

Your other option is to access live chat, which you can do from anywhere on cyberghost.com by clicking the chat button in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Live chat starts with a "CyberGhost AI Assistant" (what we used to call a chatbot in the good old days) which runs you through several diagnostic questions. To its great credit, the bot does not try to link you to articles in the knowledgebase, understanding — as too many providers don't — that nobody tries live chat unless the FAQ isn't working for them.

Sam Chapman for Engadget

I decided to bother CyberGhost about the connection issue I wrote about in the Mac UI section. Within seconds, the chatbot offered me a button that would transfer me directly to a live agent. I only had to wait about 4 minutes before the agent got in touch. After that, each response took about a minute and explained everything carefully and efficiently. It was as helpful as the written knowledgebase wasn't.

CyberGhost background check

CyberGhost was founded in 2011 in Bucharest, Romania, where it's still headquartered today. It claims to have around 38 million subscribers and a staff of 70. It appears to be most popular in France and Germany.

The only thing that makes me at all uncertain about CyberGhost is that I can't find much information about its history — it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page in English. By far the most likely explanation is that CyberGhost is exactly what it seems to be: a reliable, drama-free VPN provider that doesn't court controversy. Still, I'm naturally paranoid, so I'd understand if this lacuna sends you running back to a better-documented VPN.

There is precisely one date in CyberGhost's history that everyone lists: 2017, when it was purchased by Kape Technologies. As a VPN reviewer, I have to think about Kape a lot. My opinion is that the fear around it doesn't measure up to reality. For example, back when it was known as Crossrider, Kape was not a "malware distributor"; it sold an ad-injection plugin that turned out to be a useful malware vector.

Perhaps Crossrider could have worked harder to stop its platform from being misused, but that doesn't make it a security threat today. Similarly, being owned by a businessman from Israel does not mean that Kape or CyberGhost are secretly controlled by Mossad.

I'm not here to defend Kape — I'm just pointing out that a lot of the fear isn't backed up by evidence. To my mind, Kape's consolidation of the VPN industry (it also owns ExpressVPN and Private Internet Access, plus two websites that review VPNs) is bad enough without having to look for additional conspiracies. It's up to you to decide whether or not CyberGhost's parent company presents a hard line you won't cross.

Final verdict

At the end of my journey with CyberGhost, I may not be blown away, but I'm definitely pleased. After my poor experience with PIA, I was afraid the only budget VPN I could wholeheartedly recommend was a two-year subscription to Surfshark. CyberGhost is a meat-and-potatoes VPN — it's not pushing any envelopes, but it's cheap and it does the job.

All that said, I recommend it more to casual users than to people who really need secrecy. There are just enough reddish flags that I wouldn't necessarily trust it with life-and-death information: the (possible) use of third-party managers for all servers outside Romania, the freedom to share information with any Kape subsidiary, the loss of encryption when switching servers. It'll keep you anonymous and let you stream foreign TV for cheap, but you should still choose Proton VPN if you need serious privacy.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/vpn/cyberghost-vpn-review-despite-its-flaws-the-value-is-hard-to-beat-200000250.html?src=rss

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TikTok is bolstering its age-verification measures across Europe. In the coming weeks, the platform will roll out upgraded age-detection tech in the European Economic Area, as well as in the UK and Switzerland.

The systems will assess the likely age of a user based on their profile information and activity. When the tech flags an account that may belong to a user aged under 13 (the minimum age to use TikTok), a specialist moderator will assess whether it should be banned. TikTok will send users in Europe a notification to tell them about these measures and offer them a chance to learn more.

Also, if a moderator is looking at content for other reasons and thinks an account might belong to an underage user, they can flag it to a specialist for further review. Anyone can report an account they suspect is used by someone under 13 as well. TikTok says it removes about 6 million underage accounts in total from the platform every month.

Those whose accounts are banned can appeal if they think their access was wrongly terminated. Users can then provide a government-approved ID, a credit card authorization or selfie for age estimation (the latter process has not gone well for Roblox as of late, as kids found workarounds for age checks).

TikTok acknowledged that there's no single ideal solution to the issue as things stand. "Despite best efforts, there remains no globally agreed-upon method for effectively confirming a person's age in a way that also preserves their privacy," it stated in a blog post. "At TikTok, we're committed to keeping children under the age of 13 off our platform, providing teens with age-appropriate experiences and continuing to assess and implement a range of solutions. We believe that a multi-layered approach to age assurance — one in which multiple techniques are used — is essential to protecting teens and upholding safety-by-design principles."

TikTok is rolling out these practices after a pilot in Europe over the last year. That project helped the platform to identify and remove thousands more underage accounts. It worked with the Data Protection Commission (its main privacy regulator in the EU) to help ensure it complied with the bloc’s strict data protection standards.

These measures are coming into force amid intensifying calls to keep kids off social media. A social media ban for under 16s in Australia went into effect last month. Affected platforms have collectively closed or restricted millions of accounts as a result. Reddit has filed a lawsuit over the ban. 

A similar ban might be on the cards in the UK amid public pressure and cross-party support. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said "all options are on the table" and that he was watching "what is happening in Australia."

The House of Lords is set to vote on proposals for an under-16 social media ban next week. If an amendment passes, members of parliament will hold a binding vote on the matter in the coming months.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/tiktok-tightens-age-verification-across-europe-130000847.html?src=rss

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Today, Amazon shared more details about the final chapter of its game New World: Aeternum. The company announced in October that it would wind down support for the MMO, with the Nighthaven season to be its last. New World will be delisted and no longer available for purchase starting today, but the game's servers will not be taken offline until January 31, 2027. People who own the game will be able to continue playing until that date. Nighthaven season will continue through to that end date.

Players who had previously purchased New World: Aeternum will be able to re-download and continue playing up to the shutdown date. In-game currency such as Marks of Fortune will no longer be available to buy starting July 20, 2026, and refunds will not be offered for Marks of Fortune purchases.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/amazons-new-world-aeternum-mmo-will-go-offline-january-31-2027-205449407.html?src=rss

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YouTube is rolling out some additional parental controls, including a way to set time limits for viewing Shorts on teen accounts. In the near future, parents and guardians will be able to set the Shorts timer to zero on supervised accounts. "This is an industry-first feature that puts parents firmly in control of the amount of short-form content their kids watch," Jennifer Flannery O'Connor, YouTube's vice president of product management, wrote in a blog post. Along with that, take-a-break and bedtime reminders are now enabled by default for users aged 13-17. 

The platform is also bringing in new principles, under which it will recommend more age-appropriate and "enriching" videos to teens. For instance, YouTube will suggest videos from the likes of Khan Academy, CrashCourse and TED-Ed to them more often. It said it developed these principles (and a guide for creators to make teen-friendly videos) with help from its youth advisory committee, the Center for Scholars and Storytellers at UCLA, the American Psychological Association, the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital and other organizations.

Moreover, an updated sign-up process for kid accounts will be available in the coming weeks. Kid accounts are tied to parental ones, and don't have their own associated email address or a password. YouTube says users will be able to switch between accounts in the mobile app with just a few taps. "This makes it easier to ensure that everyone in the family is in the right viewing experience with the content settings and recommendations of age-appropriate content they actually want to watch," O'Connor wrote.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/youtube/youtube-adds-more-parental-controls-including-a-way-to-block-teens-from-watching-shorts-151329673.html?src=rss

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Computer brand Framework has hiked the prices on RAM for its Desktop systems and Mainframes in response to rising costs with its suppliers. Compared with when the Desktops were announced, the 32GB and 64GB options each cost $40 more, but its 128GB variation now costs an extra $460. The current pricing for machines is $1,139 for 32GB, $1,639 for 64GB or $2,459 for 128GB. 

Since the company began altering its pricing structure last month, it committed to remaining transparent with customers about the changes happening to RAM prices. Framework also said it would reduce prices again once the market calms down. The original prices will be honored for any existing pre-orders. 

One of the big takeaways from CES 2026 was that RAM is going to be an expensive commodity this year. The rising costs are largely in response to artificial intelligence projects, such as the rush to build data centers. As a result, buyers who take the modular approach may want to upgrade less costly components for better specs without making the increasingly hefty investment in memory.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/framework-increases-desktop-prices-by-up-to-460-due-to-ram-crisis-234827145.html?src=rss

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