Press

My team and I often engage with journalists and reporters to broaden our research impact. These articles often cover different Internet Freedom issues, sometimes directly about our work, and some based on my insights with quotes from me.

Highlighted reporting is listed below. Find a comprehensive list of all news articles and press mentions here.

VPNalyzer

I'm thrilled to announce that the results of the Consumer Reports partnership have recently been cited by elected officials calling on the FTC to regulate the VPN ecosystem.

• Engadget - US Congress calls for the FTC to regulate how VPN companies operate
• PC Gamer - VPNs aren't as protective as you think they are, says US Congress
• TechTimes - VPNs to See Massive Changes Soon, Lawmakers Take Case to FTC for Misleading Experience
• The Record - Lawmakers call for FTC crackdown on deceptive VPN practices amid abortion bans
• The Verge - Lawmakers push FTC to clean up the VPN industry
• The Washington Post - Your VPN may be snake oil. These three are trustworthy.
• Torrent Freak - US Lawmakers Want FTC to Crack Down on Overpromising and Dishonest VPNs
• Yahoo - US Lawmakers Want FTC to Crack Down on Overpromising and Dishonest VPNs


• New report provides insight on VPN users understanding and requirements
  In: VPN Compare, August 2022.
  
• A Golden Age of Systems Security Research: What’s Happening at the NDSS Symposium 2022
  In: Internet Society, April 2022.
  
• Popular VPNs are useless: They lie to users and do not save from surveillance
  In: CNews, December 2021.
  
• A New Report on VPNs Shows They're Often a Mixed Bag for Privacy
  In: Gizmodo, December 2021.
  
• VPN Testing Reveals Poor Privacy and Security Practices, Hyperbolic Claims
  In: Consumer Reports, December 2021.
  
• Should You Use a VPN?
  In: Consumer Reports, December 2021.
  
• VPN white Paper
  In: Consumer Reports, December 2021.
  

Russia Throttling

See our IMC '21 paper, Throttling Twitter: An Emerging Censorship Technique in Russia, and blog for more on Russia's throttling.

• Russia is Censoring the Internet, With Coercion and Block Boxes.
  In: New York Times, October 2021.
  Front page of the New York Times on Oct. 23, 2021
• Roskomnadzor successfully slows down Twitter. American researchers explained how he did it.
  In: Meduza, April 2021.
  
• Report: Slowdown of Twitter in Russia
  In: Roskomsvoboda, April 2021.
  
• Russia’s Twitter throttling may give censors never-before-seen capabilities.
  In: Ars Technica, April 2021.
  
• Academics: Russia deployed new technology to throttle Twitter’s traffic.
  In: The Record, April 2021.
  
• Russia can’t afford to block Twitter --- Yet
  In: Foreign Policy, April 2021.
  

Kazakhstan

See our IMC '20 paper, Investigating Large Scale HTTPS Interception in Kazakhstan, and blogs (2019, 2020) for more on Kazakhstan's HTTPS interception.

• An analysis of a large-scale HTTPS interception
  In: APNIC Blog, February 2021.
  
• Man in the middle: How Kazakhstan forced browser makers to fight state censorship
  In: Tech Monitor, January 2021.
  
• Mozilla takes action to protect users in Kazakhstan
  In: Mozilla Blog, August 2019.
  Mozilla's statement of taking action based on our Kazakhstan report.
• Protecting Chrome users in Kazakhstan
  In: Google Security Blog, August 2019.
  Google's statement of taking action based on our Kazakhstan report.
• Kazakhstan's HTTPS interception efforts target Facebook, Google, Twitter, others
  In: ZDNet, July 2019.
  
• Google and Mozilla move to stop Kazakhstan 'snooping'
  In: BBC, August 2019.
  
• Google, Apple and Mozilla to block internet surveillance in Kazakhstan
  In: CNET, August 2019.
  
• Apple, Google And Mozilla Block Kazakh Government Surveillance
  In: Forbes, August 2019.
  
• Apple, Google, and Mozilla are blocking the Kazakhstan government’s wild attempts at spying on people
  In: Business Insider, August 2019.
  
• Google, Apple, and Mozilla won’t budge on Kazakhstan’s sneaky plot to spy on citizens
  In: The Next Web, August 2019.
  

Censored Planet

See our CCS '20 paper, Censored Planet: An Internet-wide, Longitudinal Censorship Observatory, and blog for more on Censored Planet.

• Research team investigating Internet censorship with tracking system
  In: Michigan Radio, February 2019.
  
• Online censorship in Saudi Arabia soared after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder
  In: MIT Technology Review, November 2018.
  
• ‘Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies
  In: University of Michigan News, November 2020.
  
• Online censorship detector aims to make the internet a freer place
  In: Michigan CSE, January 2019.
  

Filtermap

See our NDSS '20 paper, Measuring the Deployment of Network Censorship Filters at Global Scale, and blog for more on Filtermap.

• Real-time monitor tracks the growing use of network filters for censorship
  In: Michigan CSE, February 2020.
  

Russia Information Control

See our NDSS '20 paper, Decentralized Control: A Case Study of Russia, and blog for more on Russia's information controls.

• Governments are finding new ways to squash free expression online
  In: The Economist, October 2021.
  
• Study: Russia’s web-censoring tool sets pace for imitators
  In: Associated Press, November 2019.
  Post requested by other large newspapers - New York Times, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Voice of America
• How Russia’s online censorship could jeopardize internet freedom worldwide
  In: Michigan News, November 2019.
  
• Laws, cheap web filters arm Russia to block news, says Censored Planet
  In: Committee to Protect Journalists, November 2019.
  
• Russia's Internet Censorship Is A Blueprint For Censorship In The U.S.
  In: The Inverse, November 2019.
  

Hong Kong

See our blog for more on geoblocking aimed at Hong Kong.

• US blocks Hong Kong users from some government websites
  In: Financial Times, October 2020.