The Australian government is looking into data retention policies for Internet users. This has sparked renewed interest in the top privacy VPN services. Australians have used recognized VPNs like ExpressVPN for years for content access. But this is the first big surge in popular interest in VPNs for data privacy.
Australian Data Retention
The federal government of Australia says that it wants to retain Internet user data for two years. The plan was announced last week by George Brandis, their Attorney-General. The Australian people were surprised to hear about this move. The plan is to require telecoms to record and retain browsing metadata for a period of two years.
After the announcement, the Australian people turned to privacy tools to protect their Internet data. VPNs are the best tools for the job, and Australians are already familiar with them. VPNs have been used by Australians for some time now because of the content access issues they have. Now there is new meaning for these tools that afford them strong privacy protections. Aside from VPNs, there is also a marked increase in lookups and signups for browser-based privacy tools.
The surge in VPN use has been compared to the peaks that service providers have detected during times of website blocks in countries like Turkey and Pakistan. Clearly, Australians are as concerned about protecting their Internet metadata as citizens of other countries are about website censorship. It is, in short, a big deal.
What is surprising about the data retention plan is that the government knows about the popularity of VPN use. Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s Communications Minister, announced at the Brisbane GovHack awards that browsing history is a private matter, but that everyone has a VPN anyway, so it’s not a problem. It seemed that Turnbull was saying that VPNs are such common tools for preventing IP address detection that the new law wouldn’t hurt anyone.