At Proton, our goal is to help you protect your digital rights, which means we keep a close eye on trends that could affect our community. These include a variety of topics, ranging from the secretive ways Big Tech companies spy on you to the blatant crackdowns on internet freedom by authoritarian regimes.
Learning from these trends, we’ve built technologies that give you more privacy and more control over your data, including better anti-censorship tools(neues Fenster), data breach monitoring, and much more.
Last year, we made several predictions here and on the Proton VPN blog(neues Fenster) about internet trends in 2024. This year, we’ll review those predictions and share some of our views about what we might expect to see in 2025.
How the internet evolved in 2024
The past year has been critical for the internet as political volatility and rapid technological developments reshape the landscape. Overall, we’ve seen marketers, Big Tech companies, authoritarian governments, and hackers seek out new ways to access your data and control the web.
Here are some of the major themes:
Censorship and disinformation
As many predicted, governments around the world ratcheted up their assault on internet freedom with shutdowns and disinformation campaigns, especially in countries that held elections last year.
Freedom House, which tracks internet censorship and surveillance, reported(neues Fenster) that at least 25 of the 41 countries it monitors experienced censorship and/or content manipulation designed to undermine fair elections. And at least seven countries holding elections shut off the internet entirely, according to Access Now(neues Fenster).
A further 45 countries blocked social media platforms, communications platforms, and/or websites hosting political content in 2024, according to the Freedom House report. As a result of differential access to the web, we’ve seen a further entrenchment of the “splinternet” — instead of an open web with freedom of information for all, some countries are effectively building walls around their networks to control political narratives.
VPN access
One of the best ways to bypass censorship is to use a secure VPN(neues Fenster), which is why certain governments have also tried to block access to VPN services. We predicted more efforts to block VPNs in 2024, and unfortunately we were correct.
In August, Turkey blocked access(neues Fenster) to 27 popular VPN services, including ours. It wasn’t the first time that country has tried this, and other countries, like Russia, have also attempted to block Proton VPN. In Myanmar, the military government imposed a new law(neues Fenster) threatening to jail people who use banned VPN services. The good news is that there are still ways to access Proton VPN, even if a country tries to block us. We’ve also created an option in the Proton VPN Android app to disguise the icon(neues Fenster) so it’s more discreet.
Because bans and blocks aren’t always effective, some authorities resorted to creative pressure in 2024. In Brazil, the government threatened fines(neues Fenster) for using VPNs to access X after the social media platform was banned. Venezuelan state media launched a disinformation campaign(neues Fenster) against Proton VPN. And in Pakistan, a cleric declared that using VPNs was against Islamic law(neues Fenster).
More and more surveillance
We predicted companies and governments would exploit new technologies and legal tricks to spy on us in 2024. This is certainly the case. US government agencies have collected data from vehicles(neues Fenster) and financial institutions(neues Fenster), and the Canadian government is considering a bill(neues Fenster) that could help enable mass surveillance.
Tech companies, banks, and automakers are often the conduits for government data collection because they gather and profit from so much of your data already. These companies have greatly expanded their surveillance efforts, even to the point of seeming to abandon their privacy-washing strategy.
For example, Apple was caught eavesdropping on conversations(neues Fenster) about shoes, restaurants, and medical care to target people with ads. And Google announced it would now allow advertisers to use device fingerprinting(neues Fenster) to track your online behavior — a major privacy violation that Google itself said(neues Fenster) “subverts user choice and is wrong” in 2019.
Internet predictions for 2025
In many ways, this year will see a further development of the trends established over the past year. People will continue to find new applications for AI, and tech companies will keep trying to suck up more of your personal data to fuel their profits and train their language models.
Let’s look at some specific consequences:
DIY surveillance
In movies and fiction, surveillance devices are frequently depicted as tiny and hidden. In 2025, they conspicuously surround us at all times. Hackers, stalkers, and data brokers may try to take advantage of weak security and low-tech tools to spy on individuals for targeted attacks or to siphon large amounts of data for DIY-style mass surveillance.
To give a couple of examples of how this might work, last year a pair of college students demonstrated how Meta’s smart glasses could be used to dox people on the street in real time using facial recognition. We explained the attack in this blog post.
In another example, security researchers used license-plate recognition and a street camera livestream to track the movements of specific cars(neues Fenster). This map of traffic cameras in New York(neues Fenster) (part of a lighthearted project(neues Fenster)) shows just how extensive road surveillance has become.
Information free-for-all
“You are the media now,” Elon Musk posted on X(neues Fenster) after Donald Trump won the US presidential election in November.
While in theory this may seem to suggest a more democratic information environment, the reality is that one set of gatekeepers has been supplanted by another. Instead of institutions with accountability mechanisms controlling the journalism and entertainment industries, information flows will now be controlled by platforms like X, Facebook, TikTok, and Google.
Whereas traditional media organizations make money from customers, tech platforms make money from user engagement and data collection. Any kind of content — from AI slop(neues Fenster) to fake news(neues Fenster) — is acceptable as long as it drives engagement.
Weaponized AI
Generative AI has the power to solve many real-world problems and save people time, but like any technology it can also be put to destructive uses. There has been a lot of concern about the ways people could use AI to influence elections(neues Fenster) or steal web traffic(neues Fenster) with low-quality content. Less has been said about the ways hackers could use it to supercharge their criminal activities.
There are multiple ways they could do this. For instance, we might see AI integrated into “phishing-as-a-service” software to help hackers design personalized attacks at scale. Deepfake attacks are already on the rise — one hacker stole $25 million by impersonating a CFO(neues Fenster) in a phone call — and we’re likely to see more of this.
Little oversight or accountability
There are two ways governments have tried to rein in Big Tech abuses: by forcing them to protect people’s personal data and by preventing them from abusing their dominance to manipulate the free market. Neither effort is going as planned.
It’s been over six years since Europe implemented its sweeping data protection law, the GDPR. Since then, companies have had an obligation to respect the privacy of European citizens anywhere in the world. The EU has also enacted the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to preserve online market competition. But Big Tech companies have skirted these laws, preferring to pay paltry fines than follow the law and disrupt their surveillance-based business model. Both Apple and Google have essentially declared they would ignore the DMA.
There’s been a lot of talk about new European rules to protect personal data, keep AI safe, and protect market competition, but unless there are meaningful enforcement mechanisms and significant consequences there won’t be any changes to the status quo. It’s possible other jurisdictions, such as Brazil, India, or South Africa, could bring Big Tech to heel, but this is unlikely in 2025.
We could, however, see some US states attempt to regulate Big Tech on their own. About two dozens states already have a consumer privacy law(neues Fenster) or are actively working on one, but we probably won’t see any national legislation this year.
Widespread adoption of privacy tech
This one is admittedly aspirational, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Companies that regularly spy on their users have gone out of their way to try to persuade you they respect your privacy. The fact that almost no one believes them is a win for a better internet. But the next step is more challenging at scale — switching away from those services.
We’ve made it extremely easy to switch your email. We offer an entire encrypted ecosystem where you can protect your emails, calendar events, passwords, internet connection, files, docs, and more. And we’re constantly adding new products and services to help you take back control of your data. It’s free to get started.
We started Proton because we believe a better internet is possible. If you’re new to Proton, you can learn about our social mission, explore our products, or see our impact. Since we’re entirely supported by our community — not advertisers or venture investors — we answer only to you. Over 100 million people and businesses have already switched to Proton. If you haven’t already, make 2025 the year that you choose privacy and online freedom.
