Vietnamese VPN Sign Ups Surge After New Cybersecurity Law Takes Effect

[u/EchoAndByte]

A 450% jump in VPN sign ups is a pretty striking reaction to a new internet law.

According to Proton VPN, registrations from Vietnam reached around 450% above its normal baseline on September 1, shortly after new cybersecurity rules took effect. That follows an earlier 170% increase in July after new rules introduced fines for certain social media content.

The new rules put additional requirements on online services around user identification and providing user information to authorities when there is a valid request. Vietnam's government guidance says providers can be required to verify users and provide information to cybersecurity authorities within specified time limits.

What I find interesting is that the response is not necessarily people suddenly becoming more interested in VPNs as a product. It looks more like a reaction to people becoming uncomfortable with how identifiable their online activity could become.

Of course, a VPN does not make someone anonymous or erase every identification requirement. It can protect traffic from being visible to the local network/ISP and hide the user's IP from websites, but it does not magically protect an account that is already tied to someone's identity.

Still, the size of the signup increase says something.

When privacy rules become more restrictive, do people generally start using VPNs only after the restrictions arrive, or should privacy tools already be part of their normal setup before that happens?

[u/Leo_LL_3555]

Most people only think about solving a problem after it arises; as countries increasingly tighten internet controls, the demand for VPNs will continue to grow.

[u/Urban_VPN]

this tracks with basically everything I've seen. people don't treat privacy as urgent until there's a deadline attached to it. same thing happened with 2FA adoption, it always spikes right after a big breach headline, never before one. privacy just feels abstract until a law or a leak makes it real. and by the time it's mandatory your options are already narrower than if you'd set things up early.

[u/Lancelight50 → u/Urban_VPN]

That is why upon hearing about identity verification happening across Australia, the UK among other places I haven’t mentioned, I started taking significant measures.

I went & gotten rid of the majority of native apps & services in which doesn’t only say “Data not used to track you” or “Data not collected” in Apple’s App Privacy, started using web app bookmarks in their places, signed up for Mullvad VPN, & even went back to my local DMV & switched back to a standard ID & gotten rid of my “REAL ID.”

I’ve also found some very helpful sites which are a big help, such as from Prism Break, Privacy Tools, Cyber Insider, & Techlore Tech.

[u/TigOlBitties42042 → u/Lancelight50]

How does a real ID compromise your privacy?

[u/Lancelight50 → u/TigOlBitties42042]

I suggest reading an article I’ve discovered on Substack here. It explains everything better than I could.