A VPN built for criminals just got shut down by Europol and Eurojust
European authorities have shut down a VPN service known as First VPN, which was marketed to criminals on underground forums and linked to various cybercrimes. The operation was carried out by Europol and Eurojust, with the help of law enforcement and judicial authorities from 16 countries. The shutdown of First VPN is seen as a significant blow to cybercriminals, who relied on the service to remain anonymous and evade law enforcement action.
- ▪First VPN was marketed on Russian-language underground forums as a trusted platform for cybercriminals.
- ▪The VPN service was involved in various cybercrime activities, including ransomware attacks, large-scale fraud operations, and data theft.
- ▪The operation to shut down First VPN involved authorities from France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Romania, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.
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| Original publisher | TechSpot |
| Canonical URL | https://www.techspot.com/news/112503-europol-eurojust-take-down-major-vpn-service-used.html |
| Publication time | Fri, 22 May 2026 13:08 -0500 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-22T18:12:02.721Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-22T18:12:04.364Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | vS7oU2fJQhxv |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
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| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
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| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Security The Web europe crime A VPN built for criminals just got shut down by Europol and Eurojust First VPN was marketed on underground forums and is linked to ransomware, fraud, and data theft By Alfonso Maruccia May 22, 2026, 13:08 Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. You Cannot Hide: Virtual private networks can be useful tools for securing business practices and protecting people privacy online. When used by a criminal group, a robust VPN service provider becomes a massive security threat requiring an international counteraction effort.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechSpot.
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