This Week in Privacy #18

Tor VPN and Signal Backups Beta Released

The Tor Project has officially released a new app called Tor VPN, Signal has released chat backup now in beta, Bluesky is caving to new age verification laws, and much more.

TWIP Live 🔴

Updates from the team

Our website finally received some much needed updates, including removing Picocrypt as the original tool is no longer maintained, and publishing ZIM files that you can use to browse and distribute the Privacy Guides knowledge base offline in apps like Kiwix!

2025.09.12
What’s Changed update!: Add Mullvad Leta to Search Engines page by @redoomed1 in #3060 update!: Replace Apple Health with Apple Fitness for Fitness Tracking by @friadev in #3088 update!: Add Self-Hosting DNS page and move Vaultwarden to Self-Hosting Index by @redoomed1 in #3049 update!: Remove Picocrypt by @friadev in #3086 feat!: Include ZIM files in releases by @jonaharagon in #3102 Recent Articles update(blog)!: Privacy Is Like Broccoli by @EmAtPrivacyGuides in #3079 update(blog)!: Privacy…
Privacy Guides Communityprivacyguides

Visit the full changelog for our September website updates!

We also relaunched our newsletter, which might be where you're reading this update! Be sure to check out our first issue if you missed it:

We’re back... and so is Chat Control 😅
The Privacy Guides newsletter has arisen, Chat Control is once again threatening to endanger the internet, and we’ll be live again this Friday as usual. Thank you for being a dedicated privacy advocate.
Privacy GuidesJonah Aragon

Yesterday, Jordan published the long-awaited browser fingerprinting video, which covers how it works and why it's a problem, as well as includes portions of our interview with a member of the Mullvad Browser team on how they tackle these problems in their product:

What is Browser Fingerprinting? (Interview with Rui Hildt)
Every day when you browse the internet, you share identifiable information about your device and browser that companies use to target you with advertising and track your activity across the web.
Privacy GuidesJordan Warne

Sources

Our highlight story is Tor Project launching their new Tor VPN app as an early access beta on Android. Built on Arti, Tor’s Rust implementation, it supports per app routing where each app gets its own Tor circuit and exit IP.