this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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submitted 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) by mudkip to c/android@lemmy.world
 

Quote from Proton VPN:

Google has known about a bug that breaks VPN apps for 7 months, leaving users exposed with no warning or error, just a VPN app that stopped working in the background.

If you're using ANY VPN on Android, you can help us by getting Google's attention to fix it.

We first reported this bug to Google in September 2025.

Others like Mullvad and Wireguard reported it even earlier, in August.

Google's response? "I don't see anything unusual."

The bug corrupts Android's network stack at the system level after a VPN update, causing users to blame their VPN provider.

Restarting the app doesn't help, with the only fix being a full device reboot or VPN app reinstall, something which most users never figure out.

This affects several VPN providers on Android 16, and only Google has the access to diagnose it properly.

After 7 months of waiting, we're now asking publicly: Google, when are you fixing this?

Issue Tracker Links:

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/441315112

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/4474331

top 35 comments
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[–] webkitten@piefed.social 2 points 5 hours ago
[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

That explains a lot. Although I never had to restarty phone, my Mullvad occasionally just crashes for no reason and there is no indication.

[–] lath@piefed.social 40 points 16 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Emotional_Engi@lemmy.zip 13 points 16 hours ago

Especially considering the trend, yes, it's definitely a feature.

[–] Keshara@piefed.world 23 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

This is basically like watching the enshittification of our Android devices live

[–] SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social 6 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Shit like this is the reason I've given money to mobile Linux projects

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Hell yeah, thanks for donating! For anyone else reading, I'd suggest donating to PostmarketOS, if you have the means. They're doing extremely good work building the foundation we'll be able to use to escape Android and google forever.

[–] SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social 0 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

I'm just curious how I'll manage to get to my second factor app for my bank to run.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

A lot of bank apps actually work fine on Graphene, there's a list of working ones here: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/

[–] SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Nice, both my bank and Wero are listed. Do you think this can be adapted for postmarket?

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

It's possible that the android app could be run through a compatibility layer such as waydroid, but that would need separate testing to confirm if the app is compatible.

[–] punkibas@lemmy.zip 1 points 42 minutes ago (1 children)

Just tested on postmarketOS and both Aegis and my bank app work fine through waydroid. My bank alerts that my phone is somehow modified and that I should be careful.

So I guess they do detect it, but some banks may or may not allow you to use their app in that case. (My app works on graphene too btw)

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 points 11 minutes ago

Woah! Thanks for testing that! :D

Be sure to check out that comment @SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social

[–] skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

If that bank does not have an alternate way to 2FA, see if another bank does. They just want you to have an app dependency so they can harvest everything you do, everywhere you go, and sell it.

Banks will have to adapt when they realize people won't play their games anymore. At the end of the day, they like money, and will follow it.

[–] SeductiveTortoise@piefed.social 1 points 3 hours ago

I'm sure this will happen but I also know that we will be the first adopters so we will have to figure out how to communicate our wishes.

[–] FEIN@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

is A15 the last good version of Android

[–] webkitten@piefed.social 1 points 5 hours ago

Reason why I've disabled software updates.

[–] Electricd@lemmybefree.net 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Wanted to switch from iOS to android but honestly I’m wondering more and more if that would even be useful

Also, the fact that the kill switch feature also kills LAN sucks

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Switching to a Pixel phone to access GrapheneOS would still be worth it, and a massive increase in privacy and security.

[–] QuandaleDingle@lemmy.world 8 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Google will ban VPN apps next, I guarantee it.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

What you didn't say was what reason you have for thinking they would do this. "They're getting shittier all the time" is true, but isn't an actual reason.

[–] skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 3 hours ago

The actual reason is control. VPN on the current Android stack makes it relatively easy for a non-technical user to sign up for a paid service that blocks telemetry-harvesting back to Google. Unlike Apple's platform, Google's historically heavily relies on a cloud connection for pseudo-real-time telemetry harvesting. If a person uses a VPN with ad/app/telemetry-blocking, Google gets cut off. That means things like, their Waymo cars not receiving real-time traffic updates, their WiFi geolocation database missing current information, their adtech arm not receiving user metadata.

Google's software is quite tenacious at attempting to connect to Google too. If you ever want to see how much, install RethinkDNS and start blocking core Google services. Check the logs. You will see the app try Google in your country, then Google in neighboring countries, then other devices in your home running Google software. Any connection they can find to relay telemetry back to the big G-spot.

Google's moves right now in lieu of any government taking action against them is to solidify their platform control and metadata harvesting pipelines. They're cutting off alternate ROMs, cutting off open source hardware drivers for newer devices, partnering with Samsung to encourage Samsung to close their devices down, reducing security patch frequency on older devices, partnering more closely with Apple to ensure a stream of healthy metadata from Apple, closing the ability to install third-party apps, and also getting heavier into military contracting.

Google is an information vacuum, always has been. When their leadership was more "altruistic", the trade-off was a contribution back to society. Now that they are in a late-stage profit phase, they're just doubling down on that vacuum role hard.

[–] QuandaleDingle@lemmy.world 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

You're right, I don't actually know why they would ban vpns, other than governmental pressures. A bit of a knee-jerk, there. :)

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

So without even a law they would just do it.? Yeah knee jerk is a mild way of putting it

[–] forrgott@lemmy.zip -1 points 4 hours ago

Was there a law against ad blockers?

The answer is always to follow the money. With Google, you are the product. Your data is their money source. VPNs interfere with this.

The other guy us right. Google abso-fucking-lutey is going to ban em. Mark my words.

[–] VAK@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Thank you, I've been wondering what's going on

[–] Damarus@feddit.org 5 points 14 hours ago

So that's why my AdGuard stopped working sometimes since the upgrade. I specifically set it to VPN mode as that used to be more stable than proxy mode.

[–] Sophocles@infosec.pub 6 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

Would this affect android-based OSes like lineageOS? Or can they patch something like that?

[–] Hiro8811@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

On grapehene os and hasn't encountered mentioned bug.

[–] forrgott@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I would honestly be surprised if the Grapheme network stack wasn't fully rewritten. So yeah, my money is this bug did not propagate to their codebase.

Any other android custom ROM I would be careful with, though...

[–] Calfpupa@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 hours ago

Seems like they may have around this time

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 7 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

likely will affect them, but now that it's been disclosed will probably get patched immediately (but not by google).

[–] Electricd@lemmybefree.net 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

It has been disclosed for a while…

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

yes, but were the vendors that provide lineage/eos/etc aware of the disclosure?

probably not.

[–] moonshadow@slrpnk.net 2 points 14 hours ago

Yes to both?