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Virtual private networks (VPNs) have been household technology for a while now, but there's still a lot of uncertainty around them. This is partly due to the fact that they can conceal online activity that local or national governments deem illegal — up to and including, say, circumventing ID checks for age verification. Consumers aren't helped by the sheer amount of duds sold in app stores right next to the best VPNs, especially when they're purposefully exploiting moments that have people rushing to shore up their online anonymity. If you've almost decided to start using a VPN, you may be wondering if the services you're looking at are actually safe.
Unfortunately, the answer is a hard "it depends." VPNs are technology that can work well or poorly, just like they can be used for good or evil. There's nothing intrinsically dangerous about using a VPN — whether or not one is safe comes down to who built it and how they're running it. The good news is that there are easy ways to tell whether you're using one of the good ones.
The question "Are VPNs really safe?" can also mean something else — "Is using a VPN enough to keep me safe online?" I'll get into that too, but to spoil the ending: VPNs are important security tools, but they aren't enough to protect against all digital threats by themselves. Also, to be clear, I'm talking here about commercial VPNs like Proton VPN and ExpressVPN, not commercial VPNs like NordLayer or Cisco AnyConnect
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Amazon has confirmed that it's letting go of 16,000 workers and employees across its organization. In an announcement by company SVP Beth Galetti, she explained that Amazon was going through organizational changes to reduce layers and remove bureaucracy. Affected employees in the US will be given 90 days to look for another internal role and will receive severance pay if they do not find any. Galetti also said that Amazon doesn't have plans to announce "broad reductions every few months" but admitted that the company could "make adjustments as appropriate."
News about the layoffs was leaked in an email mistakenly sent out early to workers, along with a calendar invitation for a meeting dubbed internally as "Project Dawn." In the email seen by Bloomberg and the BBC, Amazon Web Services Senior Vice President Colleen Aubrey told workers that their "impacted colleagues" from the US, Canada and Costa Rica had already been notified. "Changes like this are hard on everyone. These decisions are difficult and made thoughtfully as we position our organization and AWS for future success," Aubrey reportedly wrote in the email.
Amazon eliminated 14,000 roles back in October 2025 across its games, logistics, payment and cloud computing divisions, with the availability of AI technologies being one of the main reasons for the layoffs. "Thi
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