Encrypted Traffic Grows Exponentially After Snowden Revelations

Encrypted Traffic Grows Exponentially After Snowden Revelations

by Dan Vlasic on 21 May 2014 · 2009 views

Last week, a Canadian broadband management company Sandvine published a new report revealing some interesting statistics. According to the report, the amount of encrypted traffic is increasing worldwide after Snowden revelations.

USA, Latin America and Europe have shown the significant increase in the share of encrypted traffic within the past year. North American encrypted traffic doubled, while Latin America's and Europe's share of encrypted traffic quadrupled.

Among other interesting statistics, Sandvine reveals BitTorrent is losing some of its share in the U.S., but continues growing in Europe. Torrentfreak compared the company's reports for the last and pending year, and noticed a staggering increase in the encrypted traffic share, especially in Europe, where the percentage of it grew from 1.47% to 6.10% in just one year.

It is fair to note that the overall Internet traffic grew as well, which means the increase is even greater, but the trend is obvious - the world is moving towards encryption, whether the NSA like it or not.

Northern American encrypted traffic increased from 2.29% last year to 3.80% this year, with the overall Internet traffic increase rate between 20-40%.

Europe

2 large Encrypted Traffic Grows Exponentially After Snowden Revelations

North America

1 large Encrypted Traffic Grows Exponentially After Snowden Revelations

Encrypted traffic becomes ever more popular globally. Latin America alone multiplied its own share of it by ten times, from 1.8% last year to 10.37% this year.

The same increase is reported in the mobile networks, too. We do not need to be certified analysts to see the increase is the result of last year's Snowden revelations. Another increase is reported for the growing popularity of VPN services and anonimizers.

Big tech companies are reluctantly trying to adapt to the new trend, introducing encryption and SSL connection, and while global online community isn't ready to quit using Google and Yahoo just yet, alternative services emerge and raise their voices. We have reported about the Tor, Tails, duckduckgo and start page and a number of other search engine alternatives that do not store user data. We plan to cover secure browsers and instant messengers that offer secure connection and encrypted traffic, so stay tuned to Download3k!

Do let us know which privacy and security areas you would like to see covered.

Comments (1)
kshu on 21 May 2014
The search engine DuckDuckGo, known for not tracking its users, said on their blog "In response to the NSA revelations, people are seeking out private alternatives as seen by our tripling of direct searches this past year".
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