SYDNEY: The fear of being caught for piracy, the Australians become more conscious about the privacy and they are taking measure to protect their privacy.
With the threat of civil actions against pirates, scare tactics from content rights holders, and new regimes of data retention and anti-piracy incoming, more and more Australians are taking steps to fade into the virtual shadows online.
A poll of more than 1000 people by Essential Research shows that 16 per cent had used a virtual private network (VPN) or the anonymising Tor network to protect their privacy online, meaning hundreds of thousands of Australians are already making using of these services.
In most cases Australians are more likely to be taking measures to protect their privacy the younger they are, according to the results. Only five per cent of those aged 55 and up have used a VPN, compared to 17 per cent of those aged 35–54 and 22 per cent of those aged 18–34.
Overall, the most common actions taken to protect privacy were clearing cookies and browser history (74 per cent), not using a website that might be using personal information (51 per cent) and turning off cookies (50 per cent).
The results come after US company Dallas Buyers Club LLC, rights holders of the movie with the same name, won a court challenge to receive details of suspected pirates from internet service providers. The company has since said it could push to have pirates cut off from the internet.
Also weighing on Australians’ minds would be upcoming laws that mandate ISPs keep data about their customers internet use for two years, and rules that set out provisions for punishing those that download films, music and TV illicitly using BitTorrent.
