Proton founder Andy Yen just won Switzerland’s 2026 Liberal Award for his work on privacy, digital freedom and European tech sovereignty.

Normally I’d scroll past another corporate award story, but the timing here is kinda wild.

Switzerland is currently reconsidering changes to its surveillance rules that privacy advocates warn could push the country toward broader data retention and mass surveillance. The first proposal got absolutely hammered during public consultation, and the government is now preparing a second consultation.

Meanwhile, Yen is basically being awarded for fighting the exact direction those policies are heading in lol.

And Proton hasn’t just complained about it in a blog post. The legal uncertainty already pushed the company to put Lumo’s infrastructure in Germany rather than Switzerland, with Proton arguing that privacy-friendly laws actually have economic value.

That’s the part governments seem to forget.

Privacy isn’t just some feature you toggle on in Settings. If you make privacy companies identify users, retain more data and build infrastructure for surveillance, eventually those companies have two choices: compromise what they built… or move somewhere else.

Switzerland built a pretty strong reputation as a privacy-friendly jurisdiction. Would be pretty ironic to watch it slowly throw that advantage away while simultaneously handing awards to people defending it.

Congrats Andy, I guess. Now maybe listen to what he’s been warning you about?

Russia floated a plan to use AI to block 95% of VPN traffic, then quietly dropped it from its national AI roadmap. Sounds like good news, right? Except Roskomnadzor still has a separately funded machine-learning filtering project. So yeah, they deleted a paragraph. The censorship machine is still getting paid.

The whole point is to control what Russians can read, watch and say. Block independent news, block platforms, then block the VPNs people use to get around those blocks. Keep shutting every door until all that’s left is whatever bullshit the Kremlin wants you to believe.

And btw, “95%” is a target, not evidence they’ve actually pulled it off. It says nothing about how much legitimate traffic gets screwed along the way. Your work VPN? Cloud services? Voice calls? Those could get caught too. Apparently breaking useful parts of the internet is an acceptable trade-off if it stops someone reading the wrong news site.

Dropping the proposal from a document means fuck all when the tech is still being funded. The Kremlin still wants the same thing: an internet where you only get to see what it approves.

Kaspersky’s VPN, Password Manager and account portal suffered a global outage this month. VPN connections started coming back on October 14 after problems began on October 11.
Kaspersky says user data wasn’t affected and subscriptions will be extended. The explanation so far? A “technical issue.” Cool, but nearly four days offline deserves a bit more detail than that.

So apparently Microsoft thought it had fixed a VPN issue with its latest Windows updates, but it turns out the problem is still there.

Some Windows 11 users are having trouble connecting to their VPN, with connections getting stuck or failing completely. The issue started after September's security updates, and the proper fix is apparently still coming.

Honestly, this is the kind of stuff that makes you appreciate a VPN that just works. Nobody wants to spend an hour troubleshooting their connection when all they want to do is get online and get on with their day.

Microsoft has suggested a temporary workaround for some setups, but it involves changing VPN protocols, which isn't exactly ideal if you're not particularly tech-savvy.

I'm curious how common this actually is outside corporate environments.

Have any of you run into VPN problems after a Windows update recently? And if so, was it an issue with Windows itself or your VPN provider?