A familiar story is playing out again: convenience-first tech quietly expands the surface area of surveillance, then courts and lawmakers scramble to redraw the boundary lines. This week’s news spans everything from
On Jan 12, 2026, Dubai’s regulators drew a bright line: certain privacy-preserving crypto assets and tools are no longer acceptable inside key Dubai jurisdictions.
Dubai’s DFSA (in the Dubai International Financial
The privacy story people were taught to believe went like this: companies collect data, you click “I agree,” regulators require disclosures, and everyone behaves. In 2026, that story collapses under its own weight.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably already past the “free VPN” stage.
You’ve looked at reputable privacy-first providers like Mullvad and Proton VPN, and you understand why they’re popular:
If you want a snapshot of where privacy and anonymity are headed, December 2025 gave us three signals that fit together uncomfortably well:
* Germany moved toward mandatory IP data retention (not content, but
