Internet users are feeling increasingly insecure about their privacy, as the collection of data from all kinds of online services has been joined in recent months by the revelations of Edward Snowden about mass internet surveillance by the NSA and other secret services.
This is according to a study by research firm GlobalWebIndex, which surveyed 110,000 people from around the world. According to the survey, 56% of participants believe that using the internet undermines their privacy. So it should be considered a natural progression that 28% said they use some technique that “camouflages” their identity online.
Based on this percentage, GlobalWebIndex estimates that 415 million people employ tools that allow anonymous "surfing." Of these tools, the first in users' preference is the Tor software, with 11%, which relies on a distributed network around the world to hide the IP of the machine.
A similar purpose is served by "Virtual Private Networks" (VPNs), which are also used in countries where access to popular platforms, such as YouTube or Facebook and Twitter, is blocked. In fact, especially in the case of China, GlobalWebIndex claims that in this way 34% of users gain access to banned sites, managing to bypass internet "filters".
Source: kathimerini.gr
