X Outage Rises The Demand For VPN Services In Pakistan
The latest restrictions on social media in Pakistan started with the Feb 8 general elections. Ahead of the elections, Imran Khan-led party, PTI’s official websites were blocked. After the contentious national election and the admission of ballot fraud by a local government, X/Twitter was also blocked. It has been five days since X has been blocked in the country but people are still accessing it. You must be wondering how. Twitter Outage in Pakistan led to an increased demand for VPN services. To access the social media platform X, internet users in Pakistan are turning to virtual private networks VPNs.
For all those unaware, VPNs mask the identity and location of users to help access websites and services that are blocked in a particular region. VPNs have become quite popular these days in Pakistan since access to X has been cut off for much of the country. The watchdog monitoring service Netblocks stated:
“While social media platforms have been marred with issues in Pakistan for the last month, the issue came to a head at about noon ET on Saturday and, as of Friday morning, X has been restricted in the country for five days”
Government Starts To Block Popular VPN Services In Pakistan
According to Top10VPN, an independent VPN review website, the demand for VPN services rose 131% on Sunday, the first full day of the X outage. It continued into Monday when the demand was 91% higher than average. Nord Security, a VPN provider in Pakistan, also revealed that search interest in its products doubled on Sunday and reached four times its usual traffic for the week on Tuesday. According to ExpressVPN, traffic to its website from Pakistan rose to 67% within the first 24 hours of the outage and increased to 80% in the four days since then. Lauren Hendry Parsons, a privacy advocate for ExpressVPN stated:
“Pakistan’s latest clampdown on social media is a continuation of a broader trend of limiting internet access and undermining digital rights in the country. It’s another example of a global decline in internet freedom as more countries have become more comfortable enforcing internet shutdowns.”
Another famous VPN provider, Surfshark, disclosed that its new user acquisition rates in Pakistan climbed between 300% and 400% as compared to the previous month. It indicates an increasing reliance on VPNs for internet access and privacy. However, now the government has started to block some of these VPN services as well. Being the first hit, Surfshark has been blocked in Pakistan. The American media team for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) posted to X that the Pakistani government will continue to block popular VPN services. So, let’s see what happens next. Stay tuned!
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