VPN

Opera is building a free VPN directly into its Android browser, the company has announced. Using the feature will make it harder for websites or ISPs to track your internet usage, and Opera says that it will not log information that travels through the service.

Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir has ridiculed his opponents' use of social media to organise recent protests against his rule.

Apple has blocked an app made by Facebook which paid users to track their internet usage.

Chinese telecom giant Huawei has demoted two employees for posting a New Year greeting on the company’s official Twitter account using an iPhone made by arch-rival Apple, an internal memo showed.

Justice officials in Iran want to ban Instagram due to what they term “immoral content on the photo-sharing app”, according to local media.

Apple has reportedly pulled more than 25,000 apps from its App Store in China that were deemed to fall foul of Chinese regulations. At least 4,000 of these apps were tagged with the word “gambling,” according to Bloomberg, while the 25,000 figure comes from state broadcaster CCTV.

State prosecutor in Iran on Tuesday insisted that Twitter remained banned in the country, refusing a request by the communication minister to lift the ban.

An international digital rights group is reporting that authorities in Mali have restricted internet access on the even of a presidential run-off vote.

The Lagos State Police Command has nabbed a 28-year old medical doctor, Michael Thompson Williams, who bought a Porsche Car worth of N28 million with fake bank alert.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani criticised the recent blockage of the country's most popular messaging app, Telegram, saying the decision by the country's judiciary is not supported by his administration.

Internet freedom has become a new political battlefield in Iran as a judicial order to block Telegram, a widely-used messaging application, has ignited anger among its tens of millions of users.

Russia has taken further steps to limit access to popular messaging app Telegram, blocking 50 internet anonymizers and VPN services, as reported by Meduza. However, Roskomnadzor, the country’s federal executive body responsible for censorship, won’t disclose which services have been blocked.

The recent discovery of the “Spectre” and “Meltdown” vulnerabilities in computer chips made by Intel, AMD and ARM, have sent big names in the sector — including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla — rushing out updates and patches to eliminate the flaw.

Reports indicate that authorities in Ethiopia have restricted access to social media in the wake of renewed clashes that have led to deaths in the Oromia region.

Chinese authorities appear to have severely disrupted the WhatsApp messaging app in the latest step to tighten censorship as they prepare for a major Communist Party congress next month.

A leading Egyptian rights group says authorities have blocked its website in a "new attack" on free speech.