Alphabet Launches ‘Outline’: Open Source Software To Run Self-Hosted VPN

Alphabet-owned Jigsaw has launched Outline, an open source Virtual Private Network (VPN) that can be hosted on your own server for free of cost.

Jigsaw announced in its post that this tool has been created for news organizations to help them set up a corporate VPN on their servers.

This will help journalists to connect to their newsdesks, media outlets and rest of the internet in a much safer way and keep their communications private.

It will also enable them to communicate securely from anywhere in the world including countries that censor some websites and block traffic.

Users can either host Outline on their own servers or set it up to work with third-party cloud-based solutions, many of which offer plans starting from $5 per month.

The technology incubator also said that the VPN is “easy to set up and manage” as it can be installed in few minutes.

Furthermore, it installs security updates automatically and lets you choose who else can access your VPN.

Outline is currently available for Android, Windows and Chrome v64+. It will arrive soon on Mac and iOS as well.

But just after its release a security researcher, Dan Guido, who leads a New York-based security firm ‘Trail of Bits’ has claimed that Jigsaw has plagiarized his work.

He launched an open-source VPN tool, AlgoVPN, back in the year 2016 and it seems that both of them are relatively similar.

Only future can tell us whether he would get the due credits for his work, until then, we can be glad that there are options to avoid getting surveilled.

Also Read: Should I Use Free VPN Services? Is It Safe To Use?