VPNs in other countries
Last month Cybernews published a piece on “VPN adoption rates by country”. Cybernews is heavily into promoting VPNs.
A week later Tech Radar, also big on VPNs, picked up on the story. They said with 10.7 million downloads so far this year, the UK ranked “eighth worldwide” in the VPN download stakes when measured against local population numbers.
Referencing VPN downloads as a proportion of internet users would have been neater but in countries with a high rate of internet penetration the difference between the two would probably be marginal whereas in others it might not.
Seemingly the UK has become
“one of the world’s fastest growing VPN markets”
And the reason for this? To quote Tech Radar
“ the Online Safety Act (is) accelerating adoption”
I’m guessing they are hoping for more ad revenue from VPN companies.
Never mind that downloading and adoption leading to actual and sustained use are not the same thing. Never mind also that, as the article notes,
“VPN usage in the UK has accelerated sharply since 2021”
That is several years before the OSA porn provisions took effect, and four years after the Green Paper appeared that ultimately, through various twists and turns, led to the adoption of the OSA in 2023.
However, even the most casual perusal of the data simply does not support the idea the UK’s OSA is necessarily the reason for anything.
Here is a table showing the apparent level of VPN take up by country:
Note in 2024 The Netherlands ranked above the UK for VPN downloads. It had and has no OSA, neither is one in sight. Ditto for Germany, Luxembourg or Cyprus, which weren’t that far behind. We’ll see where we are when the final year end figures are in.
The UK has Europe’s largest e-commerce sector and third largest in the world. Consquently more UK downloads of almost anything is hardly a big surprise.
According to one source, globally, about 31% of all internet users have a VPN. On that measure, the UK is actually behind the curve, not even on it, although the 31% figure dates from January 2024. A lot has happened in many places since then.
Looking at the countries above The Netherlands and the UK in the VPN downloads table, I didn’t dig into the history of the growth in that activity but if I were to, for some I would look at the proportion of foreign labour living locally (wanting to view content on home channels) and also try to gauge people’s interest in consuming different types of content not ordinarily or inexpensively available via local terrestrial or satellite channels e.g. Premiere League football matches.
Don’t get me wrong. I am sure there is a wider trend towards people taking steps to improve their security when they go online. However, I seriously doubt the arrival of the OSA in the UK is as big a driver as some would like us to believe.