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 @mullvadnet and Wireguard reported it even earlier, in August.

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

Here's what's actually happening ⤵️

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?

Google Issue Tracker

@protonprivacy is this supposed to be limited to A16 and the Google stack? Because I'm having a very similar issue on A15-based /e/OS from @e_mydata where the VPN (seemingly) randomly stops. It seems to be a bit less severe, though, since just restarting the app restarts the VPN properly, but I was wondering if it was related.