Latest news with #MattBurgess
WIRED
29-07-2025
- Entertainment
- WIRED
Age Verification Laws Send VPN Use Soaring—and Threaten the Open Internet
Lily Hay Newman Matt Burgess Jul 29, 2025 6:30 AM A law requiring UK internet users to verify their age to access adult content has led to a huge surge in VPN downloads—and has experts worried about the future of free expression online. Illustration: Getty Images After the United Kingdom's Online Safety Act went into effect on Friday, requiring porn platforms and other adult content sites to implement user age verification mechanisms, use of virtual private networks (VPNs) and other circumvention tools spiked in the UK over the weekend. Experts had expected the surge, given that similar trends have been visible in other countries that have implemented age check laws. But as a new wave of age check regulations debuts, open internet advocates warn that the uptick in use of circumvention tools in the UK is the latest example of how an escalating cat-and-mouse game can develop between people looking to anonymously access services online and governments seeking to enforce content restrictions. The Online Safety Act requires that websites hosting porn, self-harm, suicide, and eating disorder content implement 'highly effective' age checks for visitors from the UK. These checks can include uploading an ID document and selfie for validation and analysis. And along with increased demand for services like VPNs—which allow users to mask basic indicators of their physical location online—people have also been playing around with other creative workarounds. In some cases, reportedly, you can even use the video game Death Stranding 's photo mode to take a selfie of character Sam Porter Bridges and submit it to access age-gated forum content. For proponents of the law, there is progress to point to as well. The UK's communications regulator Ofcom says that more than 6,600 porn websites have introduced age checks so far. And major social platforms like Reddit, X, and Bluesky have also added age verification for content that is now restricted in the UK or are in the process of doing so. Microsoft has even started rolling out voluntary age checks for Xbox users in the UK. But even if this movement is satisfactory for now, digital rights advocates point out that normalizing such mechanisms creates the possibility that they will be enforced more aggressively in the future. 'I think people just want to show that we can make some progress on this without thinking about what the consequences of the progress will be,' says Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a senior staff technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. 'We do know that there are some things that you can do to help kids have a better relationship with digital tools. And that involves having an adequate social support network; it involves listening when kids run into problems and making sure that they have functioning emotional relationships with adults who can respond to them. But instead what we're looking for is a quick technological fix, and those technological fixes have consequences.' Seema Shah, VP of research and insights at the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, says five VPN apps have experienced particularly 'explosive growth' and reached the top 10 free apps on Apple's UK App Store by Monday. 'According to Sensor Tower estimates, iOS devices have seen a greater spike in VPN downloads in the UK, as downloads across the selected VPN apps are up an average of 100 percent day-over-day over the past four days on iOS versus a 5 percent day-over-day increase for Android devices,' Shah says. Multiple VPN makers have also reported spikes in visitors and sign-ups in recent days. In a post on X on Friday, Proton VPN claimed that 'just a few minutes after the Online Safety Act went into effect last night, Proton VPN sign-ups originating in the UK surged by more than 1,400%.' David Peterson, general manager of Proton VPN, told WIRED that since then there has been a sustained 1,800 percent increase in daily sign-ups. Also on Friday, the Windscribe VPN service posted a screenshot on X claiming to show a spike in new subscribers. The makers of the AdGuard VPN claimed that they have seen a 2.5X increase in install rates from the UK since Friday. Nord Security, the company behind the NordVPN app, says it has seen a '1,000 percent increase in purchases' of subscriptions from the UK since the day before the new laws went into effect. 'Such spikes in demand for VPNs are not unusual,' Laura Tyrylyte, Nord Security's head of public relations, tells WIRED. She adds in a statement that 'whenever a government announces an increase in surveillance, internet restrictions, or other types of constraints, people turn to privacy tools.' People living under repressive governments that impose extensive internet censorship—like China, Russia, and Iran—have long relied on circumvention tools like VPNs and other technologies to maintain anonymity and access blocked content. But as countries that have long claimed to champion the open internet and access to information, like the United States, begin considering or adopting age verification laws meant to protect children, the boundaries for protecting digital rights online quickly become extremely murky. 'There will be a large number of people who are using circumvention tech for a range of reasons' to get around age verification laws, the ACLU's Kahn Gillmor says. 'So then as a government you're in a situation where either you're obliging the websites to do this on everyone globally, that way legal jurisdiction isn't what matters, or you're encouraging people to use workarounds—which then ultimately puts you in the position of being opposed to censorship-circumvention tools.'
WIRED
25-07-2025
- Politics
- WIRED
The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived
Matt Burgess Lily Hay Newman Jul 25, 2025 2:00 AM Starting today, UK adults will have to prove their age to access porn online. Experts warn that a global wave of age-check laws threatens to chill speech and ultimately harm children and adults alike. Beginning today, millions of adults trying to access pornography in the United Kingdom will be required to prove that they are over the age of 18. Under sweeping new online child safety laws coming into force, self-reporting checkboxes that allow anyone to claim adulthood on porn websites will be replaced by age-estimating face scans, ID document uploads, credit card checks, and more. Some of the biggest porn websites—including Pornhub and YouPorn—have said that they will comply with the new rules. And social media sites like BlueSky, Reddit, Discord, Grindr, and X are introducing UK age checks to block children from seeing harmful content. Ultimately, though, it's not just Brits who will see such changes. Around the world, a new wave of child protection laws are forcing a profound shift that could normalize rigorous age checks broadly across the web. Some of the measures are designed to specifically block minors from accessing adult material, while others are meant to stop children from using social media platforms or accessing harmful content. In the UK, age checks are now required by websites and apps that host porn, self-harm, suicide, and eating disorder content. Protecting children online is a consequential and urgent issue, but privacy and human rights advocates have long warned that, while they may be well-intentioned, age checks introduce a range of speech and surveillance issues that could ultimately snowball online. 'Age verification impedes people's ability to anonymously access information online,' says Riana Pfefferkorn, a policy researcher at Stanford University. 'That includes information that adults have every right to access but might not want anyone else knowing they're consuming—such as pornography—as well as information that kids want to access but that for political reasons gets deemed inappropriate for them, such as accurate information about sex, reproductive health information, and LGBTQ content.' Efforts that have been mounting over the past decade to introduce strong age checks online have recently gained traction. Last month, the United States Supreme Court paved the way for states to require porn websites to check that visitors are at least 18 using age-verification technologies. Pornhub, for example, has already blocked access to visitors in at least 20 states as laws have been passed. Meanwhile, courts in France ruled last week that porn sites can check users' ages. Ireland implemented age checking laws for video websites this week. The European Commission is testing an age-verification app. And in December, Australia's strict social media ban for children under 16 will take effect, introducing checks for social media and people logged in to search engines. 'If people choose not to log on [to search engines] to avoid age assurance checks, this could have a wide-reaching impact on the streamlined, integrated ways people search for online information,' says Lisa Given, a professor of information sciences at RMIT University in Australia who has been closely following the country's age-checking policies. 'It will also affect the level of privacy people have come to expect from being able to search freely online, which may change how and where they search for information.' Coming of Age Though the recent wave of court decisions and legislation around age verification is new, multiple online platforms and services have required some form of age checking for years. The British age-verification company Yoti, which works on multiple digital identity technologies including face scanning to estimate ages, says it has done more than 850 million age checks and completes more than 1 million per day. 'Brands around the world in different sectors are using this technology, including social media, gaming, adult, dating, retail, and vaping,' a Yoti spokesperson told WIRED in an email. Age-verification mechanisms come in multiple forms. The UK's Online Safety Act, which is being overseen by communications regulator Ofcom, lists seven 'highly effective' approaches that websites can use. Typically websites will employ third-party companies from the growing age-assurance industry rather than checking ages directly themselves. Standard age verification is done by uploading a form of government identification and a selfie, using a digital identity service, or submitting credit records or other financial documentation. There are also age estimation services. For example, 'email-based' age estimation, according to the UK's Ofcom, will analyze data on where your email address has been used and for how long as part of a calculation of how old you are. Age estimation services that try to predict someone's age from a selfie or a video are also increasingly common. Their performance varies, though, depending on how accurate the underlying algorithms are. Many systems offer accuracy of 'plus or minus 18 months.' Some physical stores in France that sell tobacco already use facial estimation systems as well. There are potential privacy and security risks that come with all the approaches, though, such as excessive data gathering, government surveillance, and the threat of data breaches. And opponents of age verification argue that the technologies are not reliable and can be circumvented. Last year, for example, an Israeli ID-verification company exposed driver's licenses and other sensitive data because of a technical oversight. A study commissioned by Green politicians in Europe last year concluded that, while there were some 'promising' privacy-preserving methods for age checks, there is ultimately 'misalignment between the urgency with which governments are pushing for age assurance and the time needed to develop robust, safe, and trustworthy age assurance technology.' Preliminary results released in June from a study in Australia found multiple problems with age-checking systems. 'The question isn't whether there will be a data breach connected to age verification, it's when,' says Alison Boden, executive director of Free Speech Coalition, a US-based adult entertainment industry trade association. 'So, people circumvent the laws. In the best case, they use VPNs to protect their identities. And in the worst case, they turn to websites that flout the law, and then risk being exposed to illegal content like child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual intimate imagery. And this is all in service of policies that have clearly been shown to be ineffective.' In general, many porn sites and other adult content platforms say that they are in favor of age checks but don't agree with current approaches. Proponents of age verification say that it is possible to minimize data collection. Third-party providers can limit the personal information that is shared with individual sites conducting age verification. And, particularly, these third parties can use what are known as authentication tokens, so people can confirm their age once and then produce this credential across multiple sites and providers as verification. 'Our members do over a billion anonymized age checks a year, so our best argument is our track record—and we know that will just continue to improve because of the strict application of data minimization principles,' says Iain Corby, the executive director of the industry group Age Verification Providers Association. 'There is no need to retain any personal data after an age check is completed, and if you don't keep data, it can't be lost or stolen.' Aging Out The practical realities of widespread age verification are messy, though. For one thing, sites and services may not comply with regulations. Ofcom, the UK regulator, says that it may issue fines to websites that do not put age checks in place. It already has 11 investigations open. Additionally, not all people have the proper ID or other documents to prove their age when signing up for sites. 'No solution to this is perfect,' says Rachel Coldicutt, the executive director of Careful Industries and a former Ofcom nonexecutive director. 'Age verification assumes that all services and platforms that host harmful content are good and lawful actors and that devices don't get shared. In lots of families, someone aged under 16 or 18 would easily be able to log in to a device that belongs to one of their parents, so unless age verification is required on every login to a site or app it would be quite easy to get access to age-restricted content by using an adult's device.' In general, too, many experts note that age verification is broadly unpopular. People feel uncomfortable scanning their face or handing over personal details to view content or participate in online discourse, especially when they are trying to use a service or view content that is intimate or otherwise personal in nature. As a result, age verification can have a chilling effect on speech and the free flow of information online. And since people can use circumvention tools like VPNs to skirt national laws, there are limits to how effective these policies can be in isolation, which has the potential to tip off a sort of validation and surveillance arms race. There is often a spike in VPN interest when a country introduces new age-check laws. 'A critical point is that while these measures are intended to keep children safe from harmful content, my concern is that these measures will give parents and other members of the public a false sense of security,' says Given, the Australian academic. She adds that there should be greater government investment in education for young people, parents, and teachers about potential online harms, plus more support for people who use social media to access critical information. As Stanford's Pfefferkorn puts it, 'Ultimately, age verification tech actually poses a risk to the kids it is supposed to protect. It chills their ability to access information, and it can put them at risk of privacy violations, identity theft, and other security issues.'
WIRED
02-07-2025
- Business
- WIRED
A Group of Young Cybercriminals Poses the ‘Most Imminent Threat' of Cyberattacks Right Now
Matt Burgess Lily Hay Newman Jul 2, 2025 1:56 PM The Scattered Spider hacking group has caused chaos among retailers, insurers, and airlines in recent months. Researchers warn that its flexible structure poses challenges for defense. Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff;Empty grocery store shelves and grounded planes tend to signal a crisis, whether it's an extreme weather event, public health crisis, or geopolitical emergency. But these scenes of chaos in recent weeks in the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada were caused instead by financially motivated cyberattacks—seemingly perpetrated by a collective of joyriding teens. A notorious cybercriminal group often called Scattered Spider is known for using social engineering techniques to infiltrate target companies by tricking IT help desk workers into granting them system access. Researchers say that the group seems to gain expertise about the backend systems commonly used by businesses in a particular industry and then uses this knowledge to hit a cluster of targets before moving on to another sector. The group often deploys ransomware or conducts data extortion attacks once it has compromised its victims. Amid increasing pressure from law enforcement last year, which culminated in charges and arrests of five suspects allegedly linked to Scattered Spider, researchers say that the group was less active in 2024 and seemed to be attempting to lay low. The group's escalating attacks in recent weeks, though, have shown that, far from being defeated, Scattered Spider is emboldened once again. 'There are some uniquely skilled actors in Scattered Spider when it comes to social engineering, and they have identified a major gap in our security systems that they're successfully taking advantage of,' says John Hultquist, chief analyst in Google's threat intelligence group. 'This group is carrying out serious attacks on our critical infrastructure, and I hope that we're not missing the opportunity to address the most imminent threat.' Though a number of incidents have not been publicly attributed, an overwhelming spree of recent attacks on UK grocery store chains, North American insurers, and international airlines has broadly been tied to Scattered Spider. In May, the UK's National Crime Agency confirmed it was looking at Scattered Spider in connection to the attacks on British retailers. And the FBI warned in an alert on Friday that it has observed 'the cybercriminal group Scattered Spider expanding its targeting to include the airline sector.' The warning came as North American airlines Westjet and Hawaii Airlines said they had been victims of cybercriminal hacks. On Wednesday, the Australian airline Qantas also said it had been hit with a cyberattack, though it was not immediately clear if this attack was part of the group's campaign. 'They slowed down, and we saw them dissipate for a while throughout 2024,' says Adam Meyers, a senior vice president for counter-adversary operations at the security company CrowdStrike. 'Then they've roared back in the last couple of months, first hitting retail and then hitting insurance companies and most recently targeting airlines.' Scattered Spider first emerged as a high-profile group toward the end of 2023 as its members moved from SIM swapping attacks to launching crippling ransomware attacks on Caesar's Entertainment and MGM Resorts. The latter cost MGM around $100 million to recover from. Researchers emphasize that the collective is financially motivated, made up of mostly English-speaking teenagers and young men who are often based in the US or UK. The Scattered Spider hackers are considered an offshoot of the Com, an amorphous network of potentially thousands of trolls and criminals, many of whom engage in harassment, extortion, and child exploitation. Scattered Spider members have increasingly coalesced around a tactic of using targeted social engineering to get a foothold inside company networks. Attackers may impersonate a staff member who is locked out of their company email account and contact the firm's IT help desk to get access, before resetting multifactor authentication credentials. Researchers say that the group has also used a tactic of creating convincing phishing websites where the URLs often include the name of the target organization along with words like 'okta,' 'vpn' or 'helpdesk.' Once inside networks, the hackers deploy various types of ransomware or steal data that is used to extort companies. Meyers says Crowdstrike believes that Scattered Spider has roughly four core members, which drive the targeting of potential victims and 'leverage' resources from the wider Com ecosystem as needed. The exact structure and size of Scattered Spider is unclear, but researchers agree that the group relies on an array of third-party services to carry out its attacks. 'Deterrence is extremely difficult because we're essentially fighting a marketplace where a lot of the actors are replaceable,' Google's Hultquist says. 'For instance, Scattered Spider has worked with multiple ransomware services, so if one goes down there's always someone to replace them.' Aiden Sinnott, a senior threat researcher at cybersecurity company Sophos' Counter Threat Unit, says that Scattered Spider and the Com more broadly are connected through relationships and communities on Discord servers or Telegram groups. 'It's this kind of evolving group where maybe new younger threat actors are coming in,' Sinnott says. 'You can see this natural escalation progression as they learn skills of each other, and they're very big on sharing their wins as well.' Some Scattered Spider members may target big-name companies, while others are involved in less high-profile activity. 'There are groups, or individuals, who are really focused on hacking Coinbase accounts and stealing crypto and things like that,' Sinnott says. 'So they're not even focused on these big corporate organizations.' As Hultquist puts it, "the activity is extremely resilient, because instead of fighting a single actor, we're really fighting a marketplace.'
WIRED
26-05-2025
- WIRED
A Starter Guide to Protecting Your Data From Hackers and Corporations
Matt Burgess Sophie Johal Michaela Neville May 26, 2025 6:30 AM Thinking about where to start when it comes to protecting your online privacy can be overwhelming. Here's a simple guide for you—and anyone who claims they have nothing to hide. Photo-illustration: Anjali Nair; Getty Images With President Donald Trump's return to the White House and the US government's digital surveillance machine more powerful than ever, digital privacy should be top of mind. But the digital security world can be confusing—and there's the larger question of why. You may think, if I'm just a regular person, why is my digital privacy important? Then there are the practical questions. What's the best password manager? How can you keep your digital life under wraps at the border? And what kind of VPN should you be using? Is AI scraping my data? WIRED senior writer and security expert Matt Burgess spoke with readers in a Reddit AMA this month about the basics of keeping your digital footprint locked down. Here's what to know and why it's important. What is your advice for a quick win in terms of improving digital security for the everyday person? Or for someone who isn't tech-savvy? I think the one big thing people can do to improve their security is make sure that multifactor authentication is turned on for as many online accounts as possible. That way if anyone gets access to your password or login details, they'll also need to have another way to authenticate the login attempt (such as the codes generated by an authentication app), and it's highly unlikely that hackers will have access to that. Other quick and relatively straightforward changes you can make are to use privacy-friendly browsers and search engines and to use a password manager (the one on your phone or browser is better than nothing at all) and create unique passwords for each service you use. There are so many privacy tips out there, and it all feels important, but trying to do everything at once can be overwhelming. What are the things people should prioritize when making changes to their online habits? Improving privacy is something that's ongoing, and if you try to do everything at once then it's too off-putting. Take it one small step at a time. If I was starting now, I'd go with: Switching to a more privacy-focused browser. I alternate between Brave, Firefox and Safari. Then using a privacy-focused search engine too (such as DuckDuckGo). Trying to use services that minimize data collection (for instance, messaging app Signal doesn't collect user data and is the gold standard of end-to-end encryption). What's a good non-US-based VPN? Our favorite VPN at WIRED is currently Proton VPN, which is based in Switzerland. Proton VPN also offers the best free VPN. Unlike most services, ProtonVPN's free version gives full access to all the regular plan's features. It is limited to a single device, and there are only three server locations (Japan, Netherlands, and the US), but everything else is the same. If your needs are limited and you want to keep costs down, this is a good option. See our full guide to VPNs here. How do I deal with having to have a new account for every service and website? Should I be using new email addresses? A new email address for every account is a big undertaking! I'd recommend having an email address for the accounts that are most important to you and then having one that you use to sign up for things that are less important. There are also services that will let you create 'burner' emails that you can use to sign-up with services, and if you use an Apple device there's a 'Hide My Email' setting. What tips would you offer to those looking to keep their digital privacy while crossing the US border (or otherwise entering or exiting the States)? It really depends on what levels of risk you as an individual could face. Some people traveling across the border are likely to face higher scrutiny than others—for instance nationality, citizenship, and profession could all make a difference. Even what you've said on social media or in messaging apps could potentially be used against you. Personally, the first thing I would do is think about what is on my phone: the kind of messages I have sent (and received), what I have posted publicly, and log out (or remove) what I consider to be the most sensitive apps from my phone (such as email). A burner phone might seem like a good idea, although this isn't the right idea for everyone and it could bring more suspicion on you. It's better to have a travel phone—one that you only use for travel that has nothing sensitive on it or connected to it. My colleague Andy Greenberg and I have put together a guide that covers a lot more than this: such as pre-travel steps you can take, locking down your devices, how to think about passwords, and minimizing the data you are carrying. It's here. Also, senior writer Lily Hay Newman and I have produced a (long) guide specifically about phone searches at the US border. Would you recommend against having a device like Alexa in your home? Or are there particular products or steps you can take to make a smart device more secure? Something that's always listening in your home—what could go wrong? It's definitely not great for overall surveillance culture. Recently Amazon also reduced some of the privacy options for Alexa devices. So if you're going to use a smart speaker, then I'd look into what each device's privacy settings are and then go from there. How do you see people's willingness to hand over information about their lives to AI playing into surveillance? The amount of data that AI companies have—and continue to—hoover up really bothers me. There's no doubt that AI tools can be useful in some settings and to some people (personally, I seldom use generative AI). But I would generally say people don't have enough awareness about how much they're sharing with chatbots and the companies that own them. Tech companies have scraped vast swathes of the web to gather the data they claim is needed to create generative AI—often with little regard for content creators, copyright laws, or privacy. On top of this, increasingly, firms with reams of people's posts are looking to get in on the AI gold rush by selling or licensing that information. For the everyday person, I'd warn them not to enter personal details or sensitive business information! We also have a more thorough guide here. Are personal data removal services worthwhile, or are they just another vector for data thieves? Whether data removal services are worthwhile or not probably depends on where you are based in the world: I'm in Europe where there's GDPR and stricter privacy laws, and when I have used a data removal service, it hasn't turned up too much. But in the US, there's no comprehensive federal privacy law—that really should change—and they may be more useful. Much of what can be done by data removal services, you can also do yourself. Consumer Reports recently did a good evaluation of data removal services. What is your preferred response for people who claim they have nothing to hide? I think in a lot of cases when people claim they have nothing to hide, they often jump to thinking about illegal or malicious things. When in fact, privacy, for me, isn't about 'hiding' things at all. You should be able to have the space—both in the physical and digital world—to not be surveilled or have your actions tracked. People should be able to act without intrusion from others—that doesn't mean you're hiding anything, but you just don't want to share everything you do with everyone (or anyone). And really that's why privacy is considered a fundamental human right. I actually like a lot of the answers that people sent in to Amnesty International about how they respond to the point of 'not having anything to hide.' With files from Scott Gilbertson.
The Sun
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
I had the dream husband for 4 years but one day something clicked & I realised I was a lesbian – my life was a lie
A WOMAN has revealed how she left her "dream" husband, house and career behind when she realised she was gay and found new love - just like Pitch Perfect's Anna Camp. Lauren Burgess, 39, thought she had the perfect life until stress led her to therapy which led her to realise she was a lesbian. 10 10 10 In February 2021 she took the plunge and left her husband, Matt, 42, after four years of marriage to travel the West coast of America in a van with her dog, Ted, a Goldendoodle. The business and wealth strategist from Joshua Tree, California, met Amanda Sartoris, 35, a strength and conditioning coach from Venice, through a mutual friend in January 2023, and fell in love. Lauren remains on good terms with her ex-husband, Matt, 42, a financial consultant from Englewood, Colorado - but is focusing on her new life with her girlfriend. Pitch Perfect actress Anna Camp was seen passionately kissing her girlfriend Jade Whipkey for the first time since their love affair was revealed, this week. Camp was previously married to her Pitch Perfect co-star Skylar Astin, but they separated in 2019 less than three years after the wedding. "It was so hard, but Matt was supportive and understanding," said Lauren. "It felt very selfish, and I had a lot to grieve. She added: "Matt is an amazing person and I still have a lot of care there for him. "It's been really hard, but I had to follow my dreams." Lauren had thought she was genuinely happy in her life until she came down with chronic hives in April 2018. I always thought I fancied men then became a lesbian at 33 - strangers think my girlfriend's my MUM but it's true love "I would go to bed every night grateful and content," she said. "I had a home and a job I was passionate about, but I worked very long hours which caused me to come in hives. "I was in and out of hospital until my therapist told me I needed to drop something to get better." When Covid hit in March 2020 Lauren found herself becoming depressed. "I could hardly get out of bed," she said. 10 "Matt and I started having marriage therapy and we discussed travelling. "But all of a sudden he changed his mind and had the confidence to tell me that it wasn't what he wanted." Lauren decided that it was something she still wanted to pursue, and she bought a van on Craigslist to travel 'for a couple of weeks'. She had "experimented" with women in college but thought it was "just a bit of fun." "I'd been seeing a lot of people of social media taking about their sexuality and I began to realise that I might be bisexual," she said. "But on the trip it all clicked and I realised I was definitely gay. "It all made sense. "I knew I had to go back to my husband and talk about getting a divorce." 10 Lauren separated from Matt in February 2021 and took her belongings and went travelling along the West Coast of America ending up in Joshua Tree, California. She met Amanda in Venice Beach, California. "We had both just recently moved to Venice," Lauren explained. "We ended up meeting for coffee and kept running into each other and eventually just ended up hitting things off and spent every moment we could out surfing and eventually fell in love." 10 After a year, the couple traveled down through Baja Mexico in a van, until the heat forced them to head back. Lauren returned to Joshua Tree and Amanda to Venice, but they've made their long-distance relationship work through compromise. "We spend part of our time up here, part of our time down in Venice, surfing, working, that whole thing," she said. Lauren and Matt "stay in touch and co-parent" their dog, Ted. As for children, Lauren says she and Amanda are prioritising their careers - but they have talked about it. She said: "We've definitely talked about starting a family in the future and growing a family life by the beach." She added: "I thought I was living the life of my dreams before but now I really am." 10 Top dating trends of 2025 Swamping: When you find someone you can comfortably share your 'swamp' with and let go of the pressure to be anything but your true authentic self. No-habiting: When you choose to wait longer to move in with your partner because you value your personal space. Fiscal Attraction: When you won't settle for less and you're seeking a match who is financially secure and who you find attractive. Rejuve-dating: When you cast away the blues and grow from past experiences so you can fully embrace the future of your dating journey. Thrift-matised: When you like to go on dates but hit that sweet spot between being cheap and frugal. Hidden gems, loyalty cards - these are all your type on paper. Loud-dating: Cutting to the chase, being open and to the point with what you want so you don't waste your time. Marmalading: When you literally put your other half 'before anything else', much like Britain's most beloved bear's love for marmalade. Digital Ex-pression: The stage after a break-up when you are done grieving and turn to social media to share how you are healing to confidently get back out on the dating scene. Fine-wining: Proactively finding people to date who are older than you and who've aged just like a fine wine.
