Fight for the Future launches campaign to save VPNs
28th September 2025
This week, digital rights activists are drawing a line in the sand: leave VPNs alone. Fight for the Future, a group that has been fighting online censorship for years, declared Thursday a “VPN Day of Action” to warn lawmakers against creeping attempts to ban virtual private networks. Their message is simple, VPNs aren’t just about streaming US Netflix from abroad; they’re about basic human rights, privacy, and the freedom to access information without government surveillance. The campaign, backed by the VPN Trust Initiative (NordVPN, Surfshark, ExpressVPN) and the VPN Guild, urges people to sign an open letter demanding that politicians protect VPNs rather than criminalize them. The letter points out that recent age-verification laws, forcing people to upload IDs or credit card details just to browse certain sites, are already driving people to VPNs in droves. Instead of respecting that as a legitimate privacy choice, some lawmakers want to ban VPNs entirely. Lia Holland, Fight for the Future’s campaigns director, didn’t mince words. She warned that these proposals would have a “chilling effect” on free speech, especially for vulnerable communities who rely on VPNs to avoid surveillance. And she’s not wrong, from Iran to India to China, governments that restrict VPNs have used them as tools of control, not safety. Do we really want to head in that direction? Even legal experts admit that banning VPNs would be a logistical nightmare. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Mario Trujillo pointed out that VPNs aren’t just privacy tools, they’re a backbone of modern business. From remote workers logging into corporate networks to journalists protecting sources, VPNs are everywhere. Shutting them down wouldn’t just be an attack on privacy, it would break huge chunks of the economy. For now, VPN bans remain more threat than reality in most democracies, but activists warn that complacency is dangerous. As Holland put it, politicians risk “kicking the hornet’s nest” of millions of tech-savvy citizens who know exactly how important VPNs are, and who aren’t about to give them up without a fight.
