After India’s Porn Ban, VPN Downloads Skyrocketed by 405 Percent

In October of last year, India—the world’s second most populous country, and third most active when it comes to watching porn—banned online porn. In response to a court decree, the government ordered hundreds of adult sites blocked by Indian internet service providers, as AVN.com reported. Perhaps not surprisingly, simply blocking porn sites did not, however, decrease the Indian appetite for online porn. What it did apparently accomplish, however, was increasing the demand for online privacy tools. The ban went into effect in October of 2018. According to a new report by the site Quartz, the ensuing 12-month period saw downloads of Virtual Private Network, or VPN, software, shoot up by a whopping 405 percent. In the year after the porn ban took effect, Indian internet users downloaded 57 million copies of VPN software. By employing a VPN, a user disguises the IP address that identifies the point of login—and the user’s physical location in the “real world.” VPN software can reroute internet traffic to make it appear as if it originates anywhere in the world, depending on the software itself. In other words, users logging in to porn sites from India can get around the state-imposed blockages by appearing, thanks to a VPN, to log in from the United States, or Europe—or anywhere else where porn is not banned. Indians have also searched for information about VPNs using Google at significantly higher rates than prior to the porn ban, according to the Quartz report. Though VPN software will allow users to circumvent India’s domestic porn ban, the “priavte” networks may not be as private as advertised. According to the Quartz report, the “vast majority” of India’s VPN users log in with “free” VPN services. As AVN.com has reported, though “free” VPNs may not charge money for their use, they are far from “free.” In fact, free VPN services tend to rake in revenue by collecting, then selling, user data.  “You are paying with your data,” cybersecurity expert John Mason wrote. “If you use free VPNs, no matter how popular or reliable they appear, know that you are most likely using a data farm.” Photo By Nikhil K / Wikimedia Commons