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Services used by hundreds of thousands of people to protect their identity on the web are vulnerable to leaks, according to this report researchers at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and others.
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are legal and increasingly popular for individuals wanting to circumvent censorship, avoid mass surveillance or access geographically limited services such as Netflix and BBC iPlayer.
The study of 14 popular VPN providers found that 11 of them leaked information about the user because of a vulnerability known as ‘IPv6 leakage’.
The study also examined the security of various mobile platforms when using VPNs and found that they were much more secure when using Apple’s iOS, but were still vulnerable to leakage when using Google’s Android.