ExtraTorrent | Almost 1/3 of the World Care about Online Privacy

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This significant uptake in anonymity tools must be explained by the gathering crisis of trust around consumer online services along with the fallout from Edward Snowden’s revelations. Netizens continue their battle with censorship and efforts to assert their right to web privacy.
 

56% of Internet users around the world feel that the worldwide web is eroding their personal privacy, with 415 million people or 28% of the entire online population using privacy tools to disguise their identity or location. 11% of Internet users prefer Tor, recognized as the most high profile for anonymizing access to the web. It means that Tor could be regularly used by over 45 million people, mostly in Indonesia (21% of users), Vietnam (18%) and India (15%).

By the way, Indonesia showed the highest penetration of general anonymity instruments among its citizens: 42% of them use proxy servers or VPNs. They are followed by 34% of the Chinese, hiding from 2 million of “Internet analysts” hired by the local government to block “inappropriate” content. 60% of people using VPN or proxies say they want to access YouTube, and 55% say they want to access Facebook and Twitter. This means that China’s Facebook and Twitter userbase could be much larger than first thought. For example, China’s VPN-using audience alone could account for 160 million people, most of whom are incorrectly identified as located somewhere in the US. In the meantime, the location of IP address is normally used to deliver relevant regional advertising and offer version of the site in the local language.

VPN is used by 38% of the online population in Vietnam, 36% in Brazil and Thailand, 34% in Mexico, India and China, 32% in the UAE and Argentina, 17% in the US, UK, Germany and Ireland, and 5% in Japan.

It should also be noted that the recent research underscores the shift from text messaging to mobile messaging clients like WeChat, with 20% of its users being in China. Facebook remains the most popular social network with 1.1 billion active users, and the company’s $1bn acquisition of Instagram proved a sound bet. The most common activity on Facebook includes sharing content, instant messaging and comments. Finally, MySpace languishes at the bottom of the charts, because it hasn’t integrated sharing with other networks.