Online shields

The internet keeps getting more hostile — rife with censorship, spies, data-siphoning companies and criminals. Want proof? Look at the rise of virtual private network software. It can help people circumvent censors and shield their activities from government and other spies.

VPNs mask users’ internet addresses and locations, carrying data through encrypted tunnels to internet on-ramps whose geography can vary. Security experts say no one should use a public Wi-Fi connection without one.

Worldwide, mobile VPN downloads were up 54% in the past 12 months — to 480 million. That’s nearly the same rate as the previous year.

U.K.-based PrivacyCo Ltd., publisher of Top10VPN.com, cautions that the survey doesn’t include China or Iran because the data is unreliable. Apple hasn’t offered VPN downloads in China since 2017 and Google services are censored.

China was long the No. 1 market for VPN downloads and is certainly in the top four, says PrivacyCo analyst Simon Migliano. Of 73 countries studied, the top market was Indonesia, with 75.5 million. The United States was not far behind at 74.6 million. India was third, at 57 million.

Reasons for spikes in worldwide usage include new online censorship laws in Vietnam, bandwidth throttling during election unrest in Indonesia and mass surveillance in Kazakhstan.