About anoni.net News

anoni.net News is written by anoni.net, an anonymity network community based in Taiwan. It covers international news on privacy, anonymity networks and internet censorship from the angle we know best, technology and the open-source ecosystem. Each piece opens with what happened and who is affected, then its Perspective section covers the technology involved, the first step readers can take now, and what it costs them.

Coverage

Stories are grouped into the categories below, one each. Select a category to see every story in it.

Encryption & Messaging

How messaging apps and cloud services encrypt your data, and the laws and policies that seek to have providers hand over or scan communications.

Tracking & Personal Data

Tracking code on websites and apps, the profiles data brokers build, and the personal data apps and AI services read.

Surveillance & Spyware

Surveillance by governments and companies, including spyware and face and licence plate recognition, and the rulings and investigations around it.

Censorship & Access Control

Restrictions and requirements that governments and platforms set on getting online, reaching content and publishing apps, including website blocking, age verification, real-name rules and developer verification.

Phones & Apps

Feature and policy changes to phone operating systems, app stores and apps, and what they mean for privacy and security.

Security & Scams

Phishing, scams, intrusions and data breaches, and the steps people can take to protect themselves.

Civil Society Tech Practice

How civil society groups use, assess and respond to technology, from digital security guides to record-keeping, evidence preservation and community networks.

Weekly Brief

A weekly round-up of privacy, anonymity and censorship news that did not get a story of its own, one paragraph each.

We do not cover tech news unrelated to privacy, anonymity networks or censorship, such as general AI governance or the business of the tech industry. Release announcements that only bump a version number without changing how people use a tool are left out, as are fundraising, event and staffing announcements.

There is also a companion series, Same Day, Years Apart, with one page per date looking back at what happened in privacy, anonymity networks and censorship on that date in earlier years.

Story selection

Candidates come from about thirty regular sources, including digital rights groups, security research teams, open-source projects and news outlets, plus daily picks from tech communities. Maintainers shortlist by headline, then read the original to confirm there is something useful to add. Priority goes to things readers can download, configure or follow today, and to technical or policy changes that alter how people already work.

Fact-checking

Every factual sentence has to trace back to the original report or an official source; inferences without one are removed or marked as inferences. The current state of tools and services, including versions, prices, supported platforms and regions, and whether a Chinese interface exists, is checked against official pages on the day of writing, and official information wins where it differs from the original report.

The sources behind each piece are listed in its Sources panel with publisher and date, including the laws and statistics consulted for regional comparisons.

Corrections

When we find an error or outdated detail after publication, we correct all three language versions together. The articles live in a public GitHub repository, so every change and its date can be checked.

Follow-ups

Privacy and censorship stories often run for months. Bills are amended and voted on, features leave beta, and investigations turn up new findings months later. When a story we have covered moves forward, we write a follow-up that opens with a one-line recap, so it makes sense even if you missed the earlier piece. Earlier pieces link to the latest one just below the headline, and every piece in the story lists the others at the end, so wherever you start, you can see where things stand now.

Three language versions

Each piece is published at the same time in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese and English, with the Traditional Chinese version as the factual reference. The Perspective section is rewritten for each readership. The Simplified Chinese version is written for readers inside mainland China and abroad, and covers whether a service is reachable there and how to get it. The English Perspective is longer and adds comparisons of laws and service availability across Asia, including when the story is about an American or European product. The Perspective sections therefore differ, and each version lists its own additional sources.

Byline

Pieces are credited to the anoni.net community by default rather than to individuals, so contributors who do not want to leave a personal trace can take part. Whether a piece is accurate can be checked against its sources and the public revision history.

Reporting an error

If you spot a factual error, outdated information or a translation problem, please open an issue on GitHub, naming the piece and the sentence, ideally with a source. If you would rather not use a GitHub account, email [email protected], preferably encrypted with PGP.

Text size, colours and reader mode

See Reading options for changing text size, dark mode and reader mode.

Listening

See Reading options for listening to stories with the Listen button on story pages or the read-aloud features built into your browser and device.

Analytics and privacy

We count readership with a self-hosted Umami instance that sets no cookies and sends nothing when your browser has Do Not Track or GPC enabled. Besides page views, it counts four kinds of clicks: links in the Sources section, subscription links (recording the channel (RSS, newsletter or Bluesky) and whether the link sits in the masthead, at the end of a story or in the footer), front-page story links (recording whether the click came from the featured story or the timeline), and the Listen button on story pages (only the first click per page view). Click events do not include the link's address. Reading the pages needs no JavaScript, and they load no third-party fonts or resources. The onion version loads no analytics; its address is in the footer of every page.

Licence

Articles are published under CC BY 4.0; you are welcome to republish and quote them with attribution. Copyright in the quoted originals belongs to their authors.

To quote a particular sentence, select it in Chrome, Edge or Safari and copy a link to the highlighted text from the right-click or long-press menu. The link opens the page scrolled to that passage, with the passage highlighted. When you print a story or save it as a PDF, the page address is printed at the end, and external links in the story and its sources are followed by their full addresses.