How much does anonymity cost?

Publication date: 13 Aug 2021

Experts predict an increase in the cost of VPNs, which provide most of the anonymity on the Web. This is due to the recent ban in Russia of Opera VPN and VyprVPN proxy services.

Companies have different estimates of the prospective rise in proxy prices in Russia in 2021. For example, Navicon promises an increase of 5-12%, while Red Shield VPN counts 10-15%.

In addition to the ban on certain items of proxy services, the price increase was influenced by the pandemic – increase in the number of remote workers – as well as the rise in price of technical equipment required for signal encryption: now in the market there is a shortage of some components, such as wires and chips.

But Google has launched a VPN service, available to some Google One subscribers, in seven new countries. These include Mexico, Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Wondering how different countries’ gambling markets operate – read Reviews on 3snet.

The company began offering VPN access in October 2020 in the U.S. – as a free add-on to its $9.99 per month Google One tariff plan. It has now been expanded to more countries.

In doing so, the Google VPN service has a number of limitations: users can only use it in one of the supported countries. If you travel to a country where the service is not supported, you won’t be able to use it.

In addition, Google doesn’t allow access to content in other countries or regions by obtaining a regional IP address. Instead, the system assigns an IP address based on the user’s current country so that websites can show relevant content for that region. At the same time, Google prevents the tracking of the city or region in which the user is located.

The VPN is still only available on Android devices, although last year the company promised to expand its support to other platforms, including iOS, Windows and Mac. So far, however, nothing has changed.

Cryptocurrencies will no longer be anonymous

One of the fundamental advantages of cryptocurrency – its anonymity – risks disappearing over the years. According to experts, states will soon introduce mandatory identification of cryptocurrencies, which will destroy anonymous platforms. Perhaps now is the best time to invest in cryptocurrency?

It’s likely that by 2025, many countries will initiate mandatory identification of the owner of cryptocurrency assets when making settlements. Only crypto deposits and savings will remain anonymous. Thus, crypto will be de-anonymized and impersonal traders and holders will disappear from the markets.

In the meantime, there is an increasing demand from ordinary people to pay with cryptocurrencies. The Pymnts resource found this out and released a report on the payment preferences of American consumers, making an aspect on cryptocurrency. The study was conducted together with BitBay. 8 thousand respondents took part in the survey, including both owners of crypto-assets and those who don’t have “new money”. The results were impressive:

• 93% of owners and 59% of non-owners responded positively to the question of whether they would like to shop with crypto.
• 60% of owners expressed an extreme interest in paying to secure purchases and increase privacy.
• 57% of owners and 21% of non-crypto owners are interested in having the offer of cryptocurrency purchase automatically present when selecting a payment type.

Let us recall that Google brought back cryptocurrency advertising from the 3rd of August 2021 for the first time since 2018. The softening of advertising policy primarily concerns regulated cryptocurrency organizations (exchange services, wallets, etc.), but not ICOs (initial coin offerings) and DeFi (analogues of traditional financial instruments).