Elections and increasing censorship spark hike in VPN use
With authoritarian governments increasingly turning to censorship to silence dissent, limit information, and manipulate public opinion, it's perhaps not surprising that more people are turning to VPNs.
A new report from Proton VPN finds 2024 saw spikes in signups in 119 countries, including six countries with at least one spike in signups of over 5,000 percent, and four countries with at least one spike in signups of over 10,000 percent.
Latin America has been the area with the highest amount of spikes during the year, mainly driven by the political situation in Venezuela and Brazil. With a 182,890 percent increase in signups within 48 hours though, Mauritius saw the largest spike of 2024 in Proton VPN's Global Observatory. This represents over 10 percent of the entire population of the country.
Richie Koch of Proton VPN writes on the company's blog, "At Proton VPN, we feel protecting privacy and free speech is the best way to allow democracy to thrive, which is why we offer additional free VPN servers during moments of political instability and dedicate considerable resources to develop advanced anti-censorship features. These projects hold special importance to us at Proton as we believe the best measure of our success is our social impact."
More than a million people worldwide have benefited from ProtonVPN's initiative to provide free VPN servers in the run up to elections and have been able to circumvent censorship and access a free and fair internet. The initiative saw Proton provide extra free VPN servers in 21 countries for two weeks before and after election day.
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David Peterson, Proton VPN's general manager, says, "VPNs have become essential tools as governments around the globe increasingly rely on online censorship to stifle dissent and exert control. Social media blocks and internet blackouts have sadly become normalized and are now viewed as simply another tool governments can turn to. VPNs give everyday citizens the ability to fight back against this encroaching censorship."
You can see the full report on the company's blog.
Image credit: ra2studio/depositphotos.com