In an era when press freedom is under sustained assault across multiple continents, a new partnership between consumer VPN provider Surfshark and the international media development nonprofit Internews is attempting to place enterprise-grade digital protection directly into the hands of those who need it most: journalists, activists, and civil society workers operating in hostile environments.

The collaboration, announced in June 2025, will provide free Surfshark VPN access to Internews’ global network of media professionals and human rights defenders. It is a move that reflects both the growing commercial maturity of the VPN industry and the deepening crisis facing independent media worldwide. For industry observers, the deal raises important questions about the intersection of corporate cybersecurity products and nonprofit press freedom infrastructure.

The Architecture of the Partnership

According to reporting by TechRadar, the partnership will grant Internews-affiliated journalists and activists complimentary access to Surfshark’s VPN service, which encrypts internet traffic and masks users’ IP addresses. The arrangement is designed to help at-risk individuals circumvent government censorship, avoid digital surveillance, and protect sensitive source communications — all critical operational needs for reporters working in authoritarian or semi-authoritarian states.

Surfshark, a Netherlands-based VPN provider that has grown rapidly since its founding in 2018, operates more than 3,200 servers across 100 countries. The company has positioned itself as a privacy-first brand, undergoing independent security audits and maintaining a strict no-logs policy — meaning it claims not to store records of user activity. For Internews, which has operated in more than 100 countries over its four-decade history supporting independent media, the partnership represents a scalable way to extend digital security tools to field-level workers who often lack the budgets or technical expertise to procure them independently.

Why Digital Security for Journalists Has Become a Frontline Issue

The timing of the announcement is far from coincidental. Press freedom organizations have documented a sharp escalation in state-sponsored digital surveillance targeting journalists in recent years. The Pegasus spyware scandal, first exposed in 2021 by a consortium of media outlets, revealed that governments from Hungary to Saudi Arabia had deployed sophisticated phone-hacking tools against reporters, editors, and their families. Since then, the proliferation of commercial spyware has only accelerated, with firms like Intellexa and Candiru joining NSO Group in a market that Citizen Lab researchers at the University of Toronto have described as increasingly difficult to contain.

VPNs are not a silver bullet against nation-state-level surveillance — a point that cybersecurity experts are careful to emphasize. Pegasus-class spyware, for example, operates at the device level and can compromise a phone regardless of whether a VPN is active. However, VPNs do provide a critical baseline layer of protection against less sophisticated but far more common threats: network-level traffic monitoring, IP-based tracking, and the kind of deep packet inspection that authoritarian governments routinely deploy to identify and target dissidents. For a journalist filing stories from a café in Istanbul or an activist coordinating protests from Minsk, a reliable VPN can be the difference between operational security and exposure.

Internews’ Track Record and the Scale of the Need

Internews is one of the largest and most established organizations in the media development sector. Founded in 1982, the nonprofit has trained tens of thousands of journalists, built independent radio stations in conflict zones, and developed digital safety curricula tailored to specific regional threats. Its programs span from Ukraine, where it has supported war reporting since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, to sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

The organization has long recognized that physical safety and digital safety are inseparable for modern journalists. In recent years, Internews has expanded its digital security programming significantly, offering workshops on encrypted communications, secure file storage, and threat modeling. The Surfshark partnership adds a permanent infrastructure component to these efforts — rather than simply teaching journalists about VPNs, Internews can now provision them directly. As TechRadar noted, this model of integrating commercial tools into nonprofit workflows could serve as a template for future collaborations across the sector.

The VPN Industry’s Evolving Role in Human Rights

For the VPN industry, the Surfshark-Internews deal is part of a broader trend toward corporate social responsibility initiatives that align commercial interests with human rights objectives. ExpressVPN, now owned by Kape Technologies, has previously partnered with digital rights organizations, and Proton VPN — the Geneva-based provider affiliated with the Proton Mail encrypted email service — has long offered free VPN access to journalists and activists through its Proton VPN for Journalists program. Mullvad, the Swedish provider favored by many security professionals, has taken a different approach, focusing on technical transparency and refusing to collect any user data whatsoever.

What distinguishes the Surfshark partnership is its institutional scale. By working through Internews rather than processing individual applications, Surfshark gains access to a vetted, global network of media professionals — reducing the administrative burden of screening applicants while ensuring that the tools reach verified users. For Surfshark, the reputational benefits are substantial: association with a respected nonprofit burnishes the company’s credibility in a market where consumer trust is the primary competitive differentiator. The VPN industry has been plagued by fly-by-night providers with dubious privacy practices, and partnerships like this one help legitimate companies separate themselves from the pack.

Risks, Limitations, and the Trust Question

Industry insiders will note, however, that the arrangement is not without complexities. VPN providers occupy a uniquely sensitive position in the digital security chain: by routing all of a user’s internet traffic through their servers, they become a potential single point of failure. If a VPN provider’s infrastructure is compromised — or if the provider is compelled by legal authorities to hand over data — the consequences for at-risk users could be severe.

Surfshark’s no-logs policy, which has been verified by independent auditors including Deloitte, is designed to mitigate this risk. The company operates under Dutch jurisdiction, which, while part of the European Union’s data retention framework, does not currently mandate VPN logging. Surfshark has also implemented RAM-only server infrastructure, meaning that all data is wiped when servers are rebooted — a technical measure that makes it physically more difficult to extract stored information even in the event of a seizure. Still, trust in any VPN provider ultimately rests on a combination of technical architecture, legal jurisdiction, corporate governance, and ongoing independent verification. Journalists operating in the highest-threat environments may need to layer additional tools — such as Tor, encrypted messaging apps, and compartmentalized device usage — on top of VPN protection.

The Broader Fight for Digital Press Freedom

The Surfshark-Internews partnership arrives at a moment when the global press freedom situation is deteriorating by nearly every available metric. Reporters Without Borders’ 2025 World Press Freedom Index documented continued declines in media independence across multiple regions, with particular concern about the weaponization of technology against journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists has reported that the number of journalists imprisoned worldwide remains near historic highs, and that digital surveillance increasingly plays a role in the identification and prosecution of reporters.

At the same time, the tools available to protect journalists are becoming more sophisticated and more accessible. End-to-end encrypted messaging via Signal has become standard practice in many newsrooms. Secure drop systems, pioneered by organizations like the Freedom of the Press Foundation, allow sources to submit documents anonymously. And VPNs, once a niche tool for corporate IT departments, have become a mass-market product that millions of ordinary users rely on daily.

What This Means for the Industry Going Forward

The challenge, as the Surfshark-Internews partnership illustrates, is not just building better tools — it is getting those tools into the right hands, with the right training, at the right time. A VPN is only useful if a journalist knows how to configure it properly, understands its limitations, and integrates it into a broader operational security protocol. Internews’ expertise in field-level training makes it an unusually well-suited partner for this kind of deployment.

For the VPN industry more broadly, the deal signals that corporate partnerships with civil society organizations are likely to become a more prominent feature of the competitive environment. As governments around the world — from Russia and China to increasingly restrictive regimes in Africa and Central Asia — tighten controls on internet access, the demand for reliable circumvention tools will only grow. Companies that can demonstrate both technical credibility and a genuine commitment to protecting vulnerable users will be best positioned to capture market share and public trust alike. The Surfshark-Internews collaboration may be one partnership, but it reflects a structural shift in how the technology industry engages with the defense of fundamental freedoms.