Owing to the pandemic as well as campaigns launched by the government, like Digital India, our country has become a digitally empowered society where each citizen has easy access to the world of the internet at any moment of the day. With the rise in internet users across the Indian subcontinent, data privacy has become a huge concern in the virtual world. Here are some figures to show you the ins and outs of Internet Safety or Privacy.

One cyberattack occurs every 39 seconds. – Security Magazine Identity theft is one of the most popular global privacy concerns with technology. – Statista

Cookies and internet privacy data show that 16% of internet users across the world don’t take any protective measures online. – Statista

According to internet privacy statistics, people in the United States, Indonesia, and Mexico are most concerned about their data privacy due to foreign governments. – Statista

According to online safety statistics, only 36% of internet users worldwide have an antivirus program. – Statista

Governments around the world requested user information from Facebook nearly 200 thousand times in the second half of the year 2020. – Statista

Identity theft is the main online privacy and security concern for 72% of citizens in the USA. – Statista

63% of Internet users are of the notion that most companies aren’t transparent about how their data is being used. Also, 48% of users have stopped shopping with a company due to privacy concerns. – Tableau
India has the highest awareness rate in terms of online privacy’s importance and its country’s online privacy laws. – Statista

More than 20% of internet users are victims of account hacking. – Security Today
There were at least 1001 cases of data breaches in the US throughout 2020. – Statista

Virtual Private Network or popularly known as VPN is a tool that has gained momentum among users who take their “online privacy” seriously. Online privacy has become a buzzword in today’s privacy-conscious world. For readers who have no idea about VPNs, a VPN is a service that provides privacy and anonymity to users by creating an encrypted or private network over public connections. Using a VPN network will enhance your overall online experience without compromising your privacy. Like any other technology, VPN services do have some merits and demerits. Let’s now discuss a few highlightable positives and negatives of VPN connection.

Positives

Complete Anonymity & Security
The primary reason to use a VPN connection is to maintain anonymity around the Web so that hackers or any third party can’t track your web activities for their benefit. A VPN can encrypt your online traffic and change your IP address so that nobody can snoop on your interactions in the online world.

Access to Restricted Content
With a VPN tool, you can even get access to view geo-restricted content as a VPN can easily cross geo-blocks and firewalls to show censored or restricted content on your screen by simply altering your IP address to mislead websites.

Protection from Price Discrimination
This is one of the best features provided by VPN services ever. Since your IP address gets modified by the VPN, it becomes difficult for e-commerce sites to fool you with their pricing discrimination strategy. With a changed IP address, you can select your virtual location to get cheaper deals.

Enhanced Gaming Experience
Yes, a VPN can be helpful for gamers as well. As, with a hidden IP address, VPN restricts the attacker from locating the user’s location, thus, protecting him or her from DDoS attacks. Sometimes, even innocent gamers become victims of unfair IP bans which a VPN tool thrives to stop by giving them a new IP address.

No ISP Throttling
It is very common for many ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to restrict the bandwidth of their customers when they visit certain websites. But, they can’t do the same when the customers access the web via a VPN connection. How a VPN stops bandwidth or ISP throttling? Simple, by encrypting the online traffic of the users so that the provider can neither limit their data nor be able to track their online activities.

Negatives

Slow/Slower Network Connection
Since a VPN encrypts your online traffic and as we all know how time-consuming the entire process of encryption is, it is not surprising to find that your network can become slow or even slower with a VPN connection.

No Prevention from Voluntary Data Collection
A VPN cannot prevent voluntary data collection by massive data collectors, like Google and Facebook because users voluntarily give their data away to them the moment they use their services or even by just entering their sites.

Pricey
Not saying that a VPN will cost you a bomb but we also would not say that it’s going to be cheaper for you. High-quality VPNs will cost you a considerable amount of money and with the monthly subscription rates, some people might have to think twice before incorporating a VPN connection.

To wrap up, if you value your online privacy the way you value your precious possessions in reality then you can’t go wrong with a good VPN connection. There’s one more thing that matters a lot in the online environment – network speed. If you want to surf the web with the best bandwidth speed ever known, switch to Zifilink Bandwidth Aggregation Routers that offer high-speed internet on the go. To find out more, connect with Team Zifilink today.