- Surfshark is retiring its personal Search device, blaming an absence of utilization
- Already begun on cell, the total shutdown is predicted by the tip of 2026
- The corporate says the transfer frees up sources for its Antiscam Hub
Surfshark is getting ready to close down Search, its built-in personal search engine, for the easy cause that not sufficient folks have been utilizing it.
In a be aware to TechRadar, the corporate confirmed that the device, which is bundled with its One and One+ plans, might be wound down over the approaching months.
Surfshark framed the choice as a strategy to unencumber sources for the areas its clients care extra about, mainly its Antiscam Hub.
The transfer is a notable trim for one of many greatest VPN suppliers round, an organization that has spent current years bolting additional privateness instruments onto its app. Search was one in every of them, providing ad-free, tracker-free outcomes with the choice to change areas.
Why Surfshark is retiring Search
The issue, by Surfshark’s personal admission, is that hardly anybody used it. The corporate advised TechRadar that adoption stayed restricted to a really small slice of its consumer base, and that retiring the device lets it pour sources into higher-demand areas as a substitute. Chief amongst these is the Antiscam Hub.
It’s a practical name. Standalone personal search engines like google and yahoo face stiff competitors from established names like DuckDuckGo, Startpage, and Courageous Search, and a search device tucked inside a VPN app was at all times going to be a tough promote in opposition to them.
The wind-down is staggered relatively than rapid. Search has already been pulled from iOS, and it’ll disappear from Android with the subsequent app launch in early August. For now, it survives on Surfshark’s net app, so anybody who depends on it there has a while to decide on their new different.
Surfshark says it can retire Search in all places else by the tip of the 12 months, and tidy up any lingering mentions of it throughout its web site.
The place the sources are going: the Antiscam Hub
In Might, the corporate launched its Antiscam Hub for iOS, a devoted part of the app that pulls 5 present instruments right into a single interface: Private E-mail Masking, Various Quantity, Darkish Net Monitoring, Unsafe Web site Blocking, and Id Theft Protection.
At launch, the hub didn’t a lot add new options as reorganize present ones, and Surfshark billed it as the start line for a roadmap of more and more refined security measures.
That roadmap is now taking form: the corporate advised TechRadar it can quickly reveal a very new addition to the Antiscam Hub for each iOS and Android customers.
It received’t attain everybody, although. The brand new function “might be a part of the Surfshark One and One+ bundles,” Gabriele Sinkeviciute, Head of Product at Surfshark, advised TechRadar, including that the corporate will assess future releases individually.
“The VPN is our basis, however our focus is on constructing an all-in-one safety product,” Sinkeviciute mentioned.
That tracks. Rivals together with NordVPN have been consolidating their safety instruments into unified suites, as VPN suppliers push past easy visitors encryption. It additionally displays a grim actuality: US customers reported dropping about $15.9 billion to fraud in 2025, the best on document and up roughly 27% from $12.5 billion in 2024, based on the FTC.
For now, the takeaway is simple — Search is on its means out, rip-off safety is the precedence, and Surfshark says there’s extra to return.
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