More than half of Russians (62.5%) do not use VPN services. On the contrary, 22% of those living in the country actively use such applications. At the same time, 41.5% believe that these services are unsafe. This conclusion was reached by analysts from the Regional Public Center for Internet Technologies (ROCIT), who, together with colleagues from the V-Project survey service, conducted a study on the popularity of VPN services among Russian users and the level of trust in them. .
According to the research, 22.5% of participants think VPN services are safe. The rest of the participants (36%) had difficulty answering.
Analysts note that the majority of Russians prefer VPN services to access social networks (60.3%) and media (33.9%) blocked in Russia. Less than a quarter (21.8%) use such apps to download movies and music. 18.1 percent use VPNs for work and 17.4 percent for network anonymity.
At the same time, as ROCIT experts note, the malaise of VPN services has already affected the target audience of resources banned in Russia. Thus, 38.6% of respondents have less access to Instagram (the owner of the Meta company is known as an extremist and is banned in Russia), Facebook (the owner of the Meta company is known as an extremist and is banned in Russia) and X started. (Twitter) due to the need to constantly turn on VPN for this. 18%, on the contrary, does not make it difficult to do this.
However, 40.2% of respondents use VPN services on a daily basis. Fewer people use them a few times a week (24.6%) or a few times a month (16%). Among respondents, there were those who turned on VPN less than once a month (11.2%).
Free VPN services are the most popular among users (73.2%). Only 7.3% of respondents use paid ones more often.
“It is clear that VPN services are used by many Russian citizens not only to enter banned social networks, but also to bypass blocks established by foreign resource owners for political reasons or under pressure from the authorities of unfriendly countries.” Chairman ROCIT Anton Gorelkin commented on the work of the Board of Directors.
Therefore, he emphasized that Roskomnadzor is faced with the task of creating a pool of reliable VPN services that comply with the requirements of Russian legislation and provide users with guarantees on the security of personal data and personal information.
“There is no question of a complete ban on VPN services,” Gorelkin said.
7 thousand participants over the age of 18 from all regions of the country participated in the research.