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Vietnam Decree 174 Targets Unauthorized Social Media Content

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Vietnam’s government has issued Decree 174/2026/ND-CP, a regulation setting fines of up to VND 30 million (Vietnamese dong, roughly $1,150) for sharing journalistic works, literary content, or artistic material on social media without the rights holder’s consent. The rule covers telecommunications, electronic transactions, and information technology, and takes effect July 1. It applies to everyone operating an account, channel, or online community in Vietnam, from individual users to major media companies.

The same fine range, VND 20 million to VND 30 million, covers posting fabricated information, defaming individuals, distributing maps that misrepresent Vietnamese territory, producing journalistic-style content without press authorization, and failing to remove prohibited posts after authorities request their removal. Content that causes public panic or harms government operations attracts a heavier tier, running to VND 50 million.

What Decree 174 Penalizes

The regulation splits violations into two main penalty tiers. The first covers most forms of prohibited content; the second, carrying higher maximum fines, applies to licensing failures by platform operators and to speech violations that disrupt public order or government functions.

Violation Fine Range (VND) Approx. USD Who Is Liable
Sharing copyrighted journalism or artistic works without permission 20M – 30M $790 – $1,150 Individuals and organizations
Spreading fabricated, misleading, or defamatory information 20M – 30M $790 – $1,150 Individuals and organizations
Producing content resembling journalistic reports without press authorization 20M – 30M $790 – $1,150 Individuals and organizations
Sharing content promoting social evils, trafficking, or obscene material 20M – 30M $790 – $1,150 Individuals and organizations
Posting maps of Vietnam that misrepresent national sovereignty 20M – 30M $790 – $1,150 Individuals and organizations
False information causing public panic or impeding state functions 30M – 50M $1,140 – $1,900 Individuals and organizations
Operating a social network without a valid license 50M – 70M $1,970 – $2,760 Organizations

The regulation extends beyond account owners to administrators of online groups and community pages. A moderator who allows a government-flagged post to remain after a formal removal request faces the same fine exposure as the person who originally posted the content.

Several provisions carry an explicit qualifier: violations apply “provided they do not reach the threshold for criminal prosecution.” That phrase places the decree below Vietnam’s penal code, which holds separate and heavier provisions for speech the government classifies as more serious.

Three Waves of Digital Control Before This Decree

Decree 174/2026/ND-CP is not a standalone content crackdown. It is the monetary enforcement layer on a regulatory stack built over the better part of a decade, each wave adding obligations without fully dissolving what came before it.

  • Cybersecurity Law (2018): Required platforms to block prohibited content within 24 hours of a government request and mandated local data storage for users of foreign platforms.
  • Decree 72/2013: Restricted news aggregation and content redistribution on personal websites; remained in force for more than a decade before being superseded in late 2024.
  • Decree 147/2024 (effective December 25, 2024): Mandated user authentication via Vietnamese phone numbers or national identification cards; ordered platforms to remove at least 90 percent of government-flagged content; required Vietnamese user data stored locally for a minimum of 24 months; applied to any service with more than 100,000 monthly Vietnamese visitors.
  • Decree 341/2025 (February 2026): Extended copyright enforcement to cross-border platforms, explicitly placing overseas streaming services and websites serving Vietnamese users within the jurisdiction of Vietnamese authorities.
  • Decree 134/2026 (effective April 9, 2026): Clarified copyright and related rights in digital and AI-generated content contexts, with expanded administrative powers for enforcement.

Each layer added obligations without dissolving the ones before it. Decree 147 extended the 2018 Cybersecurity Law’s identity-verification demands to foreign platforms that had previously operated at arm’s length from Vietnamese regulators. Decree 341 stretched enforcement jurisdiction overseas. Decree 174 now converts those obligations into a cash-penalty schedule that reaches every Vietnamese social media account holder, group admin, and media brand with a social presence.

The practical shift is substantial. Sharing a news article from a Vietnamese outlet without explicit redistribution authorization, a routine act for millions of Facebook and Zalo users, moved from an unaddressed gray area into a codified violation. For reference, Decree 147 already required those same users to register real-name identities before posting, meaning the government now has a paper trail connecting violations to verified individuals before any fine is even assessed.

Reading the sequence in full, what emerges is not a series of separate policy decisions but an incremental tightening toward a single outcome: a digital environment where every piece of content posted is traceable, every hosting platform is licensed and monitored, and every violation carries a defined financial penalty.

Platform Compliance Under the New Rules

For global platforms, the new decree lands on top of infrastructure requirements already imposed by Decree 147. Those obligations, documented in Tilleke and Gibbins’ compliance analysis of Decree 147, include verifying Vietnamese users by phone number or national identification, retaining user data locally for at least 24 months, supplying that data to authorities on request, and maintaining internal search tools that allow government agencies to query platform content.

Decree 174 adds financial consequences for organizations that fail to maintain proper licensing. Platforms running social networking services without a valid license, or those that acquire a social media service and neglect to update their licensing filings afterward, face fines of VND 50 million to VND 70 million (roughly $1,970 to $2,760). Operating a large-scale social network without completing the required notification procedures sits in the same tier.

Media organizations face a separate notification obligation: they must register with authorities when creating accounts, pages, channels, or online groups on any domestic or foreign social media platform. The same registration requirement applies to any new account type the decree explicitly names, including community pages and online discussion groups, not just a primary organizational account.

Channel and page operators face the same penalty risk as individual users if they allow prohibited content to remain after a government removal request. Vietnam’s communications ministry, reconsolidated following the 2024 government restructuring, holds jurisdiction to initiate fines separately against each party in the chain.

The combined structure creates a multi-layer liability exposure. A platform can be fined for licensing gaps while a channel administrator on the same platform is simultaneously fined for hosting flagged content, and the individual who posted the original material faces a third independent action. None of those proceedings depends on the resolution of another.

Who Decides What Is False

The phrase “fabricated, false, distorted, defamatory or slanderous information” runs through multiple provisions of the decree without a definitional anchor. No article specifies which body makes that determination, at what evidentiary standard, or whether a formal hearing must precede a fine. The administrative process runs through Vietnam’s communications ministry and affiliated agencies, without an independent adjudicator in the procedural chain.

That ambiguity follows a consistent pattern in Vietnamese digital regulation. The 2018 Cybersecurity Law’s prohibited content categories included material that “causes confusion among the public” and “undermines national unity,” language broad enough in application to cover independent reporting on government corruption, labor conditions, or Vietnamese territorial disputes in the South China Sea. In June 2025, authorities ordered a nationwide block of the Telegram messaging application after a government report claimed more than 68 percent of Vietnamese Telegram channels were being used for activities that violated national law. A government-compiled statistic in an internal report translated into a platform-wide ban, without any published proceeding against individual channels or their operators.

Decree 174 operates inside the same tradition. The state defines the violation, the state initiates the penalty, and the path to contesting that determination runs through administrative channels that Reporters Without Borders and other international rights organizations have consistently documented as lacking independence from the party structures they nominally oversee.

Vietnam’s Press Standing in Context

Vietnam placed 174th out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF, the Paris-based press freedom nonprofit) on April 30. Decree 174 is being issued in that environment. According to RSF’s Vietnam press freedom country profile, the Communist Party of Vietnam operates Force 47, a military unit with 10,000 assigned cyber troops tasked with monitoring online expression and neutralizing dissidents, and all media is state-owned by law. Private outlets operate outside the legal framework unless they work under a state umbrella.

  • 174 of 180: Vietnam’s position in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index, last in Southeast Asia, trailing Myanmar (166), Laos (154), and Cambodia (151).
  • Approximately 40 journalists currently imprisoned in Vietnam, per RSF’s country profile, with mistreatment in detention described as widespread.
  • 17 years: the in-absentia sentence handed on December 31 to Trug Khoa Le, editor-in-chief of the Thoibao news website, for publishing material deemed to oppose the state under Article 117 of the penal code.
  • 10,000 cyber troops: the reported size of Force 47, the Vietnamese military unit assigned to defend the party line online and pursue dissidents.

Restrictions intensified ahead of the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in January. RSF noted that measures introduced in late 2025 required journalists to disclose sources to authorities and broadened the legal definition of state secrets. The 2026 index placed Vietnam near the bottom globally alongside Eritrea, North Korea, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan, citing the country’s combination of legal repression, systematic prosecution of independent voices, and the party’s weekly editorial oversight apparatus as structural conditions rather than isolated incidents.

July 1 Enforcement and the Compliance Gap

The decree takes effect in five weeks. For domestic media organizations that have not yet registered social media accounts with authorities, the window to complete that process without incurring a fine is narrowing. For foreign platforms, compliance teams will be checking whether existing notification filings cover the specific account types the regulation now explicitly names, including community pages and online discussion groups that sit separately from primary branded accounts.

Individual Vietnamese social media users face a more diffuse exposure. Sharing a news link without confirming the outlet has authorized redistribution now qualifies as a codified violation under the same fine schedule applied to defamation and map manipulation. The decree does not carve out an exemption for personal commentary or casual resharing, and it does not distinguish between an original post and a forwarded link.

For administrators of online communities, from neighborhood chat groups to hobby forums, the moderator liability clause changes the risk calculation in concrete terms. Receiving a government content-removal request and not acting on it is no longer solely a terms-of-service question. Under Decree 174, it is an administrative offense sitting in the same fine bracket as the underlying content violations themselves.

Above the administrative floor, Vietnam’s penal code carries sentences running to 20 years under Articles 109, 117, and 331 for speech that opposes, undermines, or abuses the rights the state defines. RSF’s World Press Freedom Index places Vietnam’s legal framework among the most restrictive globally. July 1 adds one more provision to that framework.

Logan Pierce is a writer and web publisher with over seven years of experience covering consumer technology. He has published work on independent tech blogs and freelance bylines covering Android devices, privacy focused software, and budget gadgets. Logan founded Oton Technology to publish clear, no nonsense tech news and reviews based on real hands on testing. He has personally tested and reviewed dozens of mid range and budget Android phones, written extensively about app privacy, and built and managed multiple WordPress publications over the past decade. Logan holds a bachelor's degree in English and studied digital marketing at a certificate level.

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GAMING

Xidax X-6 RTX 5070 Ti Gaming PC Hits Its 30-Day Low at Newegg

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Newegg has the Xidax X-6 Series gaming desktop at $2,449.99, marked down from its $2,999.99 list price and sitting at its lowest point in 30 days. Inside the Onami White chassis sits an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti with 16GB of GDDR7 memory on NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture, a Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor boosting to 5.2GHz, 32GB of DDR5 dual-channel RAM, and a 2TB NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express, the high-speed solid-state storage interface) SSD, assembled and serviced in Xidax’s Utah facility.

Comparable RTX 5070 Ti builds from standard-tier brands typically land between $2,200 and $2,400, without the boutique build quality. Getting an Xidax at this price narrows that premium to a question worth answering seriously. But the configuration also draws a hard line: the Ryzen 7 9800X3D is purpose-built to maximize frame rates, not to power a dual-role creative workstation, and that shapes who this deal is actually for.

Boutique Pricing Hits a 30-Day Floor

Xidax gaming PCs sit above the typical prebuilt price band for equivalent hardware, and for visible reasons. Every unit ships hand-assembled from the company’s Utah facility rather than rolling off an offshore production line. The X-6 Series Onami White features curved tempered glass panels, an aRGB interior, and a case designed to function as a display piece as well as a gaming rig. The premium case and in-house assembly are baked into that original $2,999.99 price tag.

At $2,449.99, the arithmetic changes. The boutique premium over a budget-tier prebuilt with the same GPU shrinks to somewhere between $250 and $450 depending on which alternative you’re comparing, and Xidax’s build quality gap over those alternatives is real. Newegg’s 30-day low badge tracks against the broader spring pattern: 50-series prebuilt inventory has expanded since January, and deal frequency on RTX 5070 Ti systems has increased noticeably heading into summer.

Where the Xidax X-6 currently sits relative to three competing builds in the same GPU tier:

  • $2,449.99 for the Xidax X-6 Onami White (Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 2TB SSD, boutique Utah assembly, on sale at Newegg)
  • $2,399.99 for the ZOTAC MEK RTX 5070 Ti (Ryzen 7 9700X, 1TB SSD, OEM build), recently $200 off on Amazon
  • $2,189.99 for the HP OMEN 45L (Intel Core Ultra 7 265K, RTX 5070 Ti, 1TB SSD), $310 off on Amazon
  • $2,000-$2,200 is the range where Skytech and ABS RTX 5070 Ti builds from brands like the Skytech King 95 and ABS Kaze II Ruby cluster, typically with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D or 9700X

What NVIDIA’s Blackwell Architecture Delivers

The RTX 5070 Ti sits between two clear market positions. The RTX 5070 below it handles 1440p gaming well but gives up VRAM headroom and ray tracing performance. The RTX 5080 above it adds substantially more compute headroom, but at a price that pushes most prebuilts to $3,000 or higher. For ultra settings at 2560x1440p resolution without leaning on upscaling, the RTX 5070 Ti handles the load natively. At 4K, DLSS 4 (Deep Learning Super Sampling, NVIDIA’s AI-powered frame upscaling system) and MFG (Multi-Frame Generation, an AI technique that inserts additional rendered frames between native ones) do the heavy lifting in supported titles.

The Blackwell silicon in this card carries several measurable improvements over NVIDIA’s prior Lovelace generation. Key specifications from NVIDIA’s published Blackwell architecture documentation:

  • 16GB GDDR7 video memory on a 256-bit bus, providing strong bandwidth for high-resolution textures, ray-traced scenes, and VRAM-intensive mods
  • 8,960 CUDA cores for rasterization and general-purpose GPU compute across gaming and creative workloads
  • 4th-generation RT Cores for hardware-accelerated ray tracing, a full generational step over Lovelace’s third-generation implementation
  • 5th-generation Tensor Cores driving DLSS 4’s AI upscaling pipeline, including the Multi-Frame Generation mode that can multiply effective frame output in supported games

For creative applications, the card handles 4K video editing timelines and mid-complexity 3D rendering without issue. Its ceiling relative to the RTX 5080 shows up in sustained professional rendering pipelines, where the compute gap compounds over hours. Paired with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the combination is optimized for gaming output rather than professional throughput.

The 9800X3D Cache Advantage at 1440p

AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D runs 2nd-generation 3D V-Cache, AMD’s process of vertically stacking 64MB of additional SRAM directly onto the processor die. The result is a total 96MB of L3 cache, compared to the 32-64MB typical of non-X3D desktop processors. The cache’s job in gaming is to keep more of the game’s actively used code paths and rendering instructions on the die itself, so the CPU spends less time waiting on slower system RAM. Those waits create frame time spikes and elevated 1% lows, the stutter a player feels even when average frame rate looks high.

In gaming benchmarks, the architecture lead over Intel is significant. Tom’s Hardware’s review of the 9800X3D found it outperforming Intel’s Core 9 285K by approximately 35% on average across a broad test suite, a margin Intel has not closed through multiple successive chip generations. The VRLA Tech benchmark analysis confirms the same pattern in 2026: the 9800X3D’s advantage is most pronounced at 1440p, where the GPU is handling meaningful load but the CPU still influences frame pacing. At 4K, games shift closer to fully GPU-bound operation and the cache advantage narrows.

The second-generation cache design also places the SRAM below the processor cores rather than above them, a structural change from the first-generation X3D architecture. Positioning the cache beneath the cores improves heat transfer away from the die, allowing the 9800X3D to support AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive overclocking feature. Standard prebuilt configurations like the Xidax X-6 run at rated clocks rather than a tuned PBO profile, but the stock performance at 4.7GHz base and 5.2GHz boost still delivers the smoothest frame delivery available from a consumer gaming CPU in this generation.

Xidax X-6 Versus the Value Tier

Three builds from the current market establish what the Xidax premium buys and where cheaper alternatives make a stronger case:

Feature Xidax X-6 Onami White HP OMEN 45L ZOTAC MEK RTX 5070 Ti
Current price $2,449.99 $2,189.99 $2,399.99
GPU RTX 5070 Ti 16GB GDDR7 RTX 5070 Ti 16GB GDDR7 RTX 5070 Ti 16GB GDDR7
CPU Ryzen 7 9800X3D (5.2GHz boost) Intel Core Ultra 7 265K Ryzen 7 9700X (5.5GHz boost)
RAM 32GB DDR5 32GB DDR5 32GB DDR5
Storage 2TB NVMe SSD 1TB NVMe SSD 1TB NVMe SSD
Assembly Boutique, Utah in-house HP OEM ZOTAC OEM
Best fit Gaming-first, premium aesthetics Gaming plus creative workloads Gaming, value-focused

The HP OMEN 45L makes a specific argument for buyers who do more than game. Intel’s Core Ultra 7 265K carries 20 P-core threads and a multi-threaded compute profile that outperforms the 9800X3D in video encoding, compilation, and sustained rendering tasks. At $260 less than the Xidax, it pairs that Intel flexibility with the same GPU and the same RAM, though it ships with half the storage. For anyone who edits, streams at professional settings, or runs demanding creative software alongside gaming, that $260 is better spent on the OMEN.

The ZOTAC MEK is the value play. Its Ryzen 7 9700X (Zen 5 architecture, 5.5GHz boost, no 3D V-Cache) trades cache depth for a higher boost clock, which helps in applications that scale with frequency rather than cache size. For pure gaming performance head-to-head against the 9800X3D in cache-sensitive titles, the 9700X concedes ground. The Xidax’s 2TB storage advantage also matters practically, given that modern AAA titles routinely exceed 100GB per install.

Who This Build Serves, and Who It Doesn’t

The strongest case for the Xidax X-6 at $2,449.99 is the gaming enthusiast who values build quality and is comfortable paying a moderate premium over a budget prebuilt for something that looks and feels different. Boutique assembly and case design hold real value for buyers who will live with a PC on their desk for three or more years. The 9800X3D’s 3D V-Cache advantage is most visible in open-world titles with complex geometry streaming, strategy games running dense AI agent calculations, and simulation games, which collectively describe a large portion of the 2026 AAA release calendar. Combined with the RTX 5070 Ti’s Blackwell feature set, this configuration will handle that workload at 1440p ultra settings without compromise.

Two buyer types should skip it. Heavy creatives doing sustained video editing, 3D rendering, or compilation work need Intel’s higher core count or AMD’s own Ryzen 9 9950X3D over the 9800X3D. The cache architecture that makes the 9800X3D exceptional for gaming trades off the raw multi-threaded throughput those workflows require. Buyers watching their budget more carefully will find RTX 5070 Ti systems from Skytech and ABS starting $250 to $450 below the Xidax, capturing the same GPU tier with a 7800X3D or 9700X processor in a standard prebuilt case. Note also that the Xidax X-6 Series listing on Newegg carries a component brand disclaimer: specific internal component brands may vary from what is advertised, which is standard practice for boutique builders managing parts availability.

The 30-day low badge marks this as an active deal window, not a permanent price shift. If the Xidax X-6 climbs back toward $2,549 or above in the coming weeks, the arithmetic against the HP OMEN 45L and the ZOTAC MEK tightens considerably, and the boutique premium becomes harder to justify. At $2,449.99, it holds. At $2,549, the HP OMEN’s $360 price gap starts doing real work.

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How to Remove Your Phone Number From Google Search Results

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Type your own name into Google. If your phone number, home address, or email shows up in the results, Google’s free “Results About You” tool lets you request removal directly from your account without filling out lengthy legal forms.

The dashboard scans Google Search for your personal contact details on a rolling schedule and notifies you each time something surfaces. In February 2026, Google expanded it to flag government-issued ID numbers too. Most users have never opened it.

What the Results About You Dashboard Covers

  • 3 contact types monitored: phone numbers, email addresses, and home addresses
  • February 2026: the update added government-issued ID number monitoring, including US Social Security Numbers, and streamlined bulk removal for explicit images
  • 2 removal outcomes when a request is approved: full URL de-listing for most cases, or query-based removal for pages that also carry publicly valuable content

“Results About You” is a privacy dashboard accessible at Google’s Results About You privacy dashboard or through the Google app. Once you enter your name and contact details, Google scans its search index on a regular schedule and notifies you whenever those details appear in a result. You can then request removal of any flagged result from the dashboard itself, or directly from a search results page using the three-dot “More” menu next to any result.

That same update also simplified the removal process for explicit images, adding a three-dot menu option inside Google Images and enabling bulk removal requests instead of one-at-a-time submissions.

On data handling, Google states it stores the contact information you provide for monitoring using advanced encryption and access controls. The company says it does not use this data to personalize ads or share it with third parties, limiting its use to monitoring, processing removal requests, and maintaining request history within your account.

Setting Up Monitoring and Submitting a Removal Request

Setting Up Monitoring

  1. Go to myactivity.google.com/results-about-you, or open the Google app, tap your profile picture, and select “Results about you.”
  2. Select “Get started” or “Settings.”
  3. Enter your name. You can add nicknames, maiden names, and alternate spellings.
  4. Add your contact details: mobile numbers, home addresses, and email addresses. The tool accepts multiple entries for each type.
  5. Turn on notifications. Google emails you when a search result matches your entered details, with follow-up alerts as new results appear over time.

Submitting a Removal Request

Once you receive an alert, Google displays the flagged result in the “To review” tab. Select the result and choose “Request to remove.” If no removal option appears on a given result, it comes from a source Google considers valuable to the public, and the self-serve removal path is not available for that entry.

You can also trigger a removal from a standard search results page. Click the “More” dots next to any result, select “Remove result,” then “It shows my personal info and I don’t want it there,” then “Contact Info,” and follow the steps through. For situations involving harassment, doxxing, or professional information posted with intent to harm you, Google’s detailed removal request form covers a broader range of circumstances than the self-serve dashboard handles.

Checking Your Request Status

After submission, Google sends an email confirmation within a few hours. The “Removal requests” tab inside the dashboard shows whether each request is in progress, approved, denied, or undone. There can be a short delay between approval and the result actually disappearing from search, but Google says the change typically takes effect within hours once a request clears review.

What Google Removes and What It Keeps

Every request goes through a public-interest review. Results from government agencies, universities, and news publications typically stay in the index even when they contain your phone number or home address. The table below covers the main content types and how Google handles each one.

Content Type Google’s Position Notes
Phone number, home address, or email Removes when approved Must be your personal info, not a business listing you control
Government-issued ID numbers (SSN, passport) Removes when approved Coverage formally expanded in the latest tool update
Bank account or credit card numbers Removes when approved Covered under Google’s older personal information policy
Results from government or educational sites Will not remove Treated as public record; no removal option shown in the tool
Results from news publications Will not remove Treated as public-interest content
Info you control directly (your own social media or personal blog) Will not remove Google expects you to delete it at the source yourself

A denied request comes with an explanation via email, and the dashboard shows the specific reason for each one. Some cases can be escalated through the detailed removal request form for situations involving harassment or doxxing, where a broader policy framework applies.

Your Data Stays at the Source

Removal from Google Search does not delete the underlying information from the website that published it. Google’s own support documentation says plainly that even after a result is removed from Google Search, it might still be on the internet.

This matters because people-search directories and data brokers operate on a crawl-and-republish cycle. If your phone number appears on a people-search aggregator, removing the Google result blocks strangers from finding it through a Google query, but the original listing stays live on the host site. Market research firm SNS Insider projected the data broker industry would reach $441.4 billion in value by 2032, driven by companies that continuously harvest and re-index personal records from public sources. A number cleared from Google today can resurface in new search results weeks later from a different URL on the same or a different platform.

Treating a Google removal request as the first step is correct. Treating it as the final one is where most people stop short.

Building a Broader Privacy Layer

Google’s tool works best when paired with parallel steps at the original sources. The following actions close the gaps the Results About You dashboard cannot reach on its own:

  • Contact the source site directly. Most people-search directories publish an opt-out process. Some require identity verification; others process requests automatically within a few business days.
  • Register with the Do Not Call Registry. In the United States, the National Do Not Call Registry is free and permanent. Registration takes effect within 31 days for compliant telemarketers.
  • Set a Google Alert for your phone number. Enter your number as the search query at google.com/alerts. You’ll get a notification when it appears in newly indexed content, giving you time to file a removal request before the result accumulates traffic.
  • Audit your public social media profiles. Phone numbers listed openly on Facebook, LinkedIn, or older forum accounts feed directly into the data broker pipeline. Making those fields private stops fresh data from entering the cycle.
  • Consider a data removal service. Paid options automate opt-out requests across hundreds of data broker databases, a meaningful time saving for anyone with a long online history or an elevated-risk situation such as harassment or stalking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does removing my phone number from Google Search delete it from the internet?

No. Removing a result through Results About You delists it from Google Search but leaves the content intact on the original website. To fully remove your information, you need to contact the site owner directly. Many people-search directories have automated opt-out pages; others require a written request or identity verification before they process the removal.

How long does Google take to process a removal request?

Google sends an email confirming receipt within a few hours of submission. The review process itself typically takes several days. Once a request is approved, the result usually disappears from search within a few hours, though Google notes a short delay is possible between the approval decision and the listing leaving the index.

What if Google denies my removal request?

Google denies requests when the result comes from a source it considers valuable to the public, such as government, educational, or news sites, when the information is something you can remove yourself at the source, or when it determines the content serves a broader public interest. The Results About You page shows the specific reason for each denial. Cases involving harassment, threats, or doxxing can often be escalated through Google’s personal information removal guidance, which covers a wider set of circumstances than the self-serve dashboard.

Can I use Results About You without a Google account?

The monitoring and dashboard features require a Google account. Without one, or if you prefer not to sign in, Google’s detailed removal request form lets you submit manual removal requests without logging in, though you won’t be able to track request status or receive automated alerts through the app.

Will my phone number come back in Google results after it is removed?

Possibly. If the source website still hosts your number and gets re-crawled, the information can reappear from the same or a different URL. Removing the data from the original site and setting a Google Alert for your number together significantly reduce the risk of it cycling back into the index without your knowledge.

The Results About You dashboard runs on a continuous schedule, checking your entered details against newly indexed results on a rolling basis and sending a notification each time something surfaces. Treat it as a standing alert rather than a single task to tick off. The phone number you cleared this week can reappear from a different source next month, but with monitoring active, you’ll catch it before a stranger does.

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Vigolium AI Scanner Puts Token Budget Decisions on Operators

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Vigolium shipped its first open-source release this month with more than 250 scan modules and an in-process AI agent, called olium, that plans its own attack strategy, generates custom JavaScript extensions mid-scan, and re-checks every finding in a separate triage pass before delivering results to the operator. The project comes from a single author, Jessie Ho, and sits on GitHub under an AGPL (Affero General Public License, an open-source license that requires any entity making the software available over a network to also publish their modifications as open source) license at no cost.

The more consequential decisions in the design are not the module count. They are buried in the budget controls: how much token spend an operator permits per session, what the agent does when time runs out, and why the same JavaScript extension model that gives Vigolium its adaptability also makes a community extension marketplace a genuine security problem.

Two Modes, One Stack

Vigolium exposes two scanning paths from a single command-line interface. The first, vigolium scan, runs a deterministic multi-phase pipeline covering content discovery, browser-based spidering for single-page applications, and active and passive auditing across a module library of 251 scanners covering injection, access control, framework-specific checks, and out-of-band attack testing. That last category includes OAST (Out-of-Band Application Security Testing, a technique for detecting blind vulnerabilities like server-side request forgery and blind injection, where the payload triggers a callback to an external server rather than producing a visible response change). It is repeatable, fast, and fits a CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery, the automated pipeline that tests and deploys code on each commit) gate without touching a language model. The full module breakdown is in Vigolium’s GitHub repository and architecture documentation.

The second path, vigolium agent, hands control to the olium runtime. The LLM (large language model, an AI system trained on large text datasets to generate and reason with language) harness selects its own modules, writes custom scan extensions based on what it observes in the target, and combines static source-code analysis with live dynamic testing. Eight AI providers are supported, including Anthropic’s API, OpenAI, Google Vertex AI, and self-hosted model servers via compatible endpoints such as Ollama and OpenRouter, so the tool is not tied to a single inference vendor.

The gap between the two modes is not only depth versus speed. Cost structure diverges sharply, and that divergence shapes how teams should reach for each.

Dimension Native Scan (vigolium scan) Agentic Scan (vigolium agent)
Logic model Deterministic, repeatable LLM-driven, adaptive
Module selection Fixed library: 154 active, 97 passive Dynamic; agent selects and generates extensions
Cost structure Compute only Compute plus AI token spend
Triage Inline, per module Separate pass after scanning completes
Best fit CI/CD gates, continuous coverage Pre-release audits, logic-flaw hunting

Budget Caps as the First Design Choice

Every autonomous reasoning loop costs tokens. Every tool call consumes context. A session without guardrails can wander for hours on a single target and return findings that are lower quality than a tighter, shorter run would have produced. Vigolium’s operator documentation exposes four configurable caps that are set before each agentic session starts.

  • Token cap: Total LLM token spend allowed per session. Raise for single-target deep dives; tighten for broad sweeps where one rabbit-hole target would otherwise consume the whole budget.
  • Tool call cap: Maximum agent tool invocations before the session is forced toward a conclusion, stopping open-ended exploration loops.
  • Triage iteration cap: Limits how many re-checking loops the agent can run on each candidate finding before delivering a verdict.
  • Wall-clock cap: A hard time limit that ends the session regardless of where the agent is mid-task. Ho recommends leaning on this first for CI runs and time-boxed engagements.

Ho described two failure modes from misconfigured caps in remarks to Help Net Security. Set too tight and the agent is cut off mid-investigation, returning a low-confidence stub that the operator still has to decide whether to act on. Set too loose and the agent wanders, spending tokens on diminishing returns and filling a report with noise that should not be there.

His guidance for new users is to open with the wall-clock and iteration caps set conservatively, then loosen only when a genuine investigation is visibly being cut off before reaching a conclusion. The judgment call shifts from the LLM to the human at the configuration stage, which is a more honest accounting of what agentic security tools actually provide: supervised autonomy, not full autonomy.

Triage Runs Separately from the Scan

AI-assisted security testing has a persistent credibility problem: the plausible finding that fails to reproduce. Cross-site scripting (XSS, a class of web attack in which malicious scripts are injected into pages viewed by other users) candidates that the agent reports with confidence but cannot demonstrate are worse than no finding, because they send a developer to chase a ghost and erode trust in every subsequent report from the same tool.

Vigolium handles this by making triage its own phase, run after scanning completes rather than inside it. Ho described the design at the project’s launch:

The scanner finds candidates, then a separate pass re-checks each one against its evidence.

On deduplication, the system favors transparency over quiet cleanup. The agent collapses exact copies of the same issue into a single representative entry but does not make keep-or-kill calls on borderline findings. Anything it is uncertain about is downgraded in severity and surfaced to the operator with its full evidence trail intact, including the specific request-response data that triggered the candidate. Operators see what the agent saw, rather than a curated version of it. That design keeps the audit trail complete and pushes the final judgment to a human, which is where it belongs.

Extensions Run Arbitrary Code Without a Sandbox

Vigolium’s JavaScript engine lets operators write custom scan modules using session-aware HTTP APIs (application programming interfaces, the standard connection mechanism between software services). The extensions run alongside built-in modules, accept command-line flags, and can execute arbitrary commands on the host machine. For teams scanning proprietary authentication flows, unusual API patterns, or frameworks the default module library does not cover, that extensibility is the practical point of the model.

It also creates a material trust problem for any sharing mechanism. Code signing establishes who wrote an extension. It does not tell an operator whether that extension is safe to run against a live application. Asked whether a community registry might emerge, Ho was candid about the constraints any such system would face, as covered in Vigolium’s product overview.

For a registry to function without simultaneously distributing exploits alongside scanners, three conditions would need to hold from the start:

  • Provenance and code signing on every submission, establishing a traceable author record so operators know exactly who built each module and when
  • An untrusted-by-default posture, with explicit operator opt-in required before any community extension is permitted to execute against a target
  • Active curation rather than open submission, keeping the available set small enough to meaningfully review before any module reaches production use

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