Home internet in Romania is fast: Ookla's Speedtest Global Index ranked the country 15th in the world for fixed broadband in August 2026, with a median download of 276 Mbps. Mobile is slower, with a median of 83 Mbps, 56th in the world.
The standing block is on gambling. The National Gambling Office (ONJN) keeps a blacklist of gambling sites operating without a Romanian licence, and internet providers must block access to them from Romania. About 800 more sites were added at a single meeting in July 2026.
Elections brought the biggest change. On 6 December 2024 the Constitutional Court annulled the presidential election after declassified intelligence reports described a network of fake accounts and bots promoting the first-round winner, Călin Georgescu, on TikTok, and on 17 December the European Commission opened formal proceedings against TikTok under the Digital Services Act. Before the rerun in May 2025, an emergency ordinance of 16 January 2025 required online campaign material to be labelled, even when ordinary users posted it, and let electoral bureaus order posts removed. By 14 April 2025 the Central Electoral Bureau had ordered 629 posts taken down, 149 of them by private individuals, mostly for missing political labels. The rights group APADOR objected that removal orders could be enforced before any court reviewed them. Freedom House says the rerun was generally free and fair.
The Constitutional Court has struck down data retention laws twice: the 2008 law in October 2009 and its 2012 replacement in July 2014. A 2015 law sets an upper limit instead: traffic data that providers process must be deleted or anonymised once it is no longer needed, and after three years at most, unless a court or prosecutor asks for it to be kept longer in a specific case. The authorities need a court's authorisation to access it.
GhostShield has no server in Romania, so it cannot give you a Romanian IP address. Nearby locations include Milan in Italy and Limburg in Germany. GhostShield uses standard WireGuard.
International Privacy Standards
Internet freedom varies significantly by country. Organizations like Freedom House track global internet freedom annually, while the EU's GDPR has set new standards for data protection worldwide. Reporters Without Borders monitors press freedom and digital access restrictions globally.
A VPN helps you maintain consistent privacy protections regardless of which country you're browsing from, ensuring your data stays encrypted and your activity stays private.
The privacy landscape in Romania
Romania is not one of the 14 countries of SIGINT Seniors Europe, the intelligence-sharing group known as the Fourteen Eyes. At home, access to communications data needs a court's authorisation under the 2015 law. When it struck down the 2012 law, the Constitutional Court said that even the secret services must have judicial approval to see retained data.
Influence operations are the threat most discussed since 2024. Declassified intelligence reports described about 25,000 fake accounts and bots pushing one candidate on TikTok before the annulled election. A VPN does nothing about that: it protects your connection, not what you are shown.
On public Wi-Fi, a WireGuard tunnel keeps your logins private from the network. It does not stop phishing pages or scam messages.
Top reasons people use a VPN in Romania
At home, a VPN keeps the sites you visit away from your internet provider, which may keep traffic data for up to three years, and from whoever runs the Wi-Fi you are on.
Romanians abroad who want PRO TV Plus, Antena Play or Digi Online cannot get a Romanian address from GhostShield, so anything that plays only in Romania stays out of reach. For other countries' services, GhostShield offers 20 locations in 16 countries.
During elections, a VPN does not change the rules on what you post: campaign material has to be labelled, and removal orders reach posts by private individuals too.