Alphabet Incubator Launches Outline, A Secure VPN For Journalists

Google announced its $300 million initiative to combat fake news yesterday which was followed up with the launch of a secure VPN for journalists called Outline. It has been developed and launched by Jigsaw which is a technology incubator at Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Outline is an open source VPN that enables news organizations to provide their networks with safer access to the open internet.

Outline will enable news organizations to easily set up a corporate VPN on their own server so that they can safely connect to the internet and ensure privacy for their communications.

Many people across the globe already use VPNs to protect themselves online but they’re not all safe or reliable. Most require users to trust a third-party organization with their data and in most cases they are unware who runs the servers. Outline is different because it lets news organizations set up the VPN on their own servers. Outline also never logs users’ traffic.

News organizations can set up Outline on any cloud provider or even their own infrastructure so that they can fully own and operate their own VPN, thus eliminating the need to trust an external VPN supplier with their data. Plans start at around $5 per month.

Jigsaw does mention that Outline is an early stage product right now and that it’s going to release versions for other platforms soon.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: VPN