Translated material
Demand for VPN has increased sharply in Russia
Over the past week, Russians have begun to look for information about VPNs two and a half times more often, the Agency reported , citing data from the Yandex Wordstat service. Journalists associated the reason for the sharp increase in demand for VPN services with a new wave of slowdown, which resulted in an almost complete blocking of YouTube video hosting.
On December 21, the number of requests in Yandex increased to 353 thousand, while the week before, on December 16, it was 191 thousand. Google Trends showed that the number of requests for VPNs among Russian residents has returned to the levels of August, when authorities first began to slow down YouTube.
There are no uniform statistics on downloading VPN services, but representatives of large providers of such solutions told the Agency that the number of user requests is growing.
Director of the Internet Protection Society Mikhail Klimarev told the publication that the number of requests for configurations for the VPN Generator service has quadrupled in seven days.
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One of the developers of Amnezia VPN and RKS VPN told reporters that the number of downloads last week increased three to four times compared to the previous week. According to him, this was the third jump in interest in the services - the first was observed in August, the second in October. As a rule, after such jumps, interest continues, remaining stable, the developer clarified.
Blogger Michael Naki, who sells access to his own VPN generator, called the growth in demand for his service “explosive.” Until December 18, users bought about a hundred VPN connections per day from the blogger’s team, but now - 500-700 daily, Naki told reporters.
A third of calls to the “On Connection” technical support service are now related to a request to recommend a VPN, a project representative told the Agency. According to him, questions about blocking YouTube number in the hundreds.
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Since the end of last week, YouTube traffic in Russia has fallen to a record low of 20%. Klimarev said that we can no longer talk about a deliberate slowdown in the speed of video hosting, but “a real blocking.” An IT expert estimated the Russian audience of VPN services at 56 million users - this is more than half of the RuNet audience.
Digital Report noted that the slowdown in American service led to a sharp decline in the Russian audience, but the attempt to attract users to the RuTube and VK platforms actually failed. Until August, about 90 million Russians watched YouTube daily, but the daily audience of state-approved video platforms does not yet exceed three to four million users.
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