There was a time not all that long ago when VPNs were the sort of thing that only companies required in order to secure data transfers and the like. There were also a few government organizations that tried to take advantage of VPNs, and apart from that the consumer demand for such products was minimal to say the least.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that VPNs have dramatically increased in popularity over the past few years. There has been a rise in cybercrime during this period as well, so it makes a lot of sense that many consumers are starting to get concerned that they wouldn’t be able to stay safe online until and unless they have a VPN to mask their online presence.
The VPN adoption index is a pretty useful tool that can help you to better understand how popular VPNs tend to be. This index has revealed that overall VPN downloads have almost tripled in 2021 alone. In 2020, there were around 277 million VPN downloads, but this number went up to 785 million in the year of 2021.
This represents an astonishing 184% increase, and if you take a look at the regions where VPNs are becoming most popular you would start to realize that cybersecurity might not be the biggest reason why their downloads are shooting through the roof.
The countries that have seen the highest number of VPN downloads are Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Oman, Kuwait, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Bolivia. The common thread throughout these countries is that their governments often try to restrict access to certain sites often in the interests of exerting control over the kind of information that their citizens are able to look into.
It makes sense that people in these countries would be eager to use VPNs since they can allow you to circumvent site blocks and get a much more balanced understanding of the world in general. This might just be the real advantage of VPNs that makes them so desirable across a wide range of societies around the world.
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Source: https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2022/02/vpn-downloads-increased-by-184-percent.html
