A few years ago, VPN was not quite popular. The average people don’t know about virtual private network, let alone set the private connection themselves. The current mainstream VPN services are also not quite well-known, and these services were mainly known only by geeks and nerds or IT professionals.
However, today, with more than a billion people worldwide owning smartphones and other gadgets, even the average smartphone users know about VPN and millions of them are also installing some types of VPN software onto their devices.
With this trend, it is apparent that the worldwide VPN usage will only go up, increasing over and over. More and more people with gadgets and smart devices will be more in need of using the virtual private network for their connection, for a number of different reasons. Here are 5 reasons VPN usage will grow significantly in the next few years:
1. The Increasing Number Of Government Restrictions
As the years go by, more and more governments around the world are increasing their restrictions on the internet usage for their citizens. This is mainly because of the massive expansion of the internet itself, with the massive amount of inappropriate content being posted on the daily basis.
Things like hate speech, obscene content, and inappropriate content make it necessary for the government to filter the good websites from the bad websites. This, of course, results in more and more websites being blocked and restricted for the citizens, making the citizens (i.e. the regular internet users) want to resort to VPN to unblock these restrictions.
2. Companies That Don’t Honor The User’s Privacy
There are thousands of global companies that are operating over the internet which actively stored the user’s data on their servers. The user’s data they store include the private information for each user, such as the personal information or credit card information, which if leaked to the public, would endanger the user’s privacy significantly. In fact, some cases have happened in the past when some companies carelessly store their user’s data and some hackers managed to leak the data to the public.
With thousands of companies available, the risk of online privacy for the average users is getting bigger. This compels them to use the VPN to make their private information more secure, especially when it comes to dealing with various online companies that store their private information.
3. Region Restrictions In Various Streaming Services
Nowadays, most people are using the internet not only to obtain information but also to get some entertainment as well. That’s why the streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and others are getting more and more popular. Many people are trying to consume various media content from these services on a daily basis. However, not all these streaming companies can provide their services worldwide. In fact, many of them are still only available for specific regions, such as the US and Europe.
So, what about the rest of the people from other countries who want to watch some movies or TV series from these popular streaming companies? They will use the virtual private network to do that since it will allow them to bypass any region restrictions for those streaming services.
4. More Skilled Hackers Are Lurking Around
Another reason that will compel the average internet users to use a private connection is the existence of hackers. Today’s hackers are quite different from yesterday’s hackers, as they are more skilled today. They have more tools in their arsenal to break into even an encryption method that is considered strong enough in the past. That’s why many online companies are forced to update their encryption system into a higher level of security to avoid any unforeseeable problems that might be caused by these hackers today.
It is the same with internet users. As more and more skilled hackers are operating online daily to breach various types of accounts, such as social media accounts, banking accounts, and accounts from other online services, users are compelled to change and strengthen their account passwords from time to time. In addition to that, installing VPN will help increase the security of their online activities more and more.
5. The More Accessible And Affordable VPN Services
Lastly, it’s because there are more and more good VPN services that are introduced to the public recently, with better features and more affordable pricing. New VPN services are offering a high quality of private connection for their users, along with the number of different features that ensure the safety of their online activities.
While in a few years back the price of the VPN services is still quite expensive for the average users, now most of the VPN companies are offering their services in big discounts. This kind of increase of more VPN services in the market will encourage more and more people to try using the VPN connection for the first time.
Those are the reasons why VPN usage will grow significantly in the next few years. As more and more people are flocking into the digital lifestyle, it will not be surprising if they will try to use the VPN services as their security tools to guard their online privacy.