Quote:As mentioned, experts are now considering including VPN services among the key challenges to investigations.

Previously, concerns were mostly reserved for messaging apps or secure email software using encryption to scramble users' content into an unreadable form, de facto making it difficult (if not impossible) for authorities to successfully decrypt wanted information.

Widening the target to VPN services seems to align with experts' view on metadata access as "essential for identifying suspects."

Metadata refers to data not concerning the content, such as who's sending the message, who's receiving it, at what time, and from where. VPNs work to mask IP addresses, which provide the details of our location when we access the internet.