Learning More About Safe VPN Usage

The Privacy Observer is a project by Direct Spark dedicated to help the entirety of the VPN audience. Its purpose is to inform people who use such services about how alone can they actually get. Thus, The Privacy Observer conducted a survey over a one month period. Between August 1st 2015 and August 31st 2015, their poll began with one of the most important questions regarding safety: Are users correctly informed about the level of privacy a VPN gives to them?

An important survey

Let’s take a look at how the results came in and what they mean exactly. However, we must emphasize beforehand that about one thousand people took this survey, from various countries. This means that the results are representative; they do not account for all the people who are internet and VPN users. Nevertheless this survey is very important, as the information is essential to predict a general knowledge about the VPN audience. We too consider knowing the most about such services a key factor in gaining an online protection that is the most favorable for the people.

The countries participating were numerous. About half of those surveyed came from either the United States or Canada. The rest of the countries include France, the United Kingdom, Russia, the Netherlands, Romania, South Korea, Germany and Australia. The first question was related to VPN usage, and 73% have used a VPN service at some point during their days. This number would probably be less if more restricted countries with high internet usage or poor access (like China or Brazil) were involved, but among the developed countries surveyed this is a surprisingly high number.

63% answered that the primary reason for using VPN was protecting their privacy. 33% was more interested in unblocking restricted content, with the rest employing VPN for other uses. This is important information in the sense that most surveyed countries are in the top half regarding internet freedom. Still, people are rightfully concerned about being monitored, even in more favorable locations.

Speed top concern

The third question enquired about what the major challenge of people is when using VPN. 44% percent was concerned about speed, while the rest were fairly equally divided between privacy, ease of use and other reason, with cost being the least troubling category at 8%. This highlights how most VPN services do come at reasonable and cheap prices. When asked about how a VPN increases privacy, 49% thought it keeps them safe from third party tracking and 44% vouched that they protect against seeing and stealing their data. It is important to emphasize here that VPN services conceal your data traffic, but a “perfect” state of protection is never possible, only something close to it.

89% of users convinced VPN increases privacy

Logging policies are a crucial factor when choosing a VPN provider. 71% thought that actual zero logging does not exist, while 29% said otherwise. One of the main messages of this survey is that zero logging is never possible. VPN providers store and are required to store at least some information about you, the user to have some means to contact you, for example. The amount of bandwidth you use and timestamps of your VPN connections are also commonly stored data. And finally, 89% of those surveyed said that using a VPN greatly increases their privacy, while the rest claimed they can be completely anonymous. Again, we would like to call attention to the fact that there is a difference between high amounts of security and a “perfectly secure” environment. VPN services can provide you with the former, but not the latter.

To sum up, though a good number of people are well informed, there is still a need for learning about VPN adequately. In the more and more restricted internet of today, it is essential to know your VPN options, so that you can bypass restrictions.