Policy Watch
VPN Ban In India: India Inc Worried Not A Deterrent for Cyber Criminals
NEW DELHI: Sharing one Netflix account among four friends is a common practice today. There are four users on one account. Now, as they progressively pay for VPN subscriptions, people are trying to split the expense of virtual private networks (VPNs).
There are several reasons for this – in India, tens of thousands of websites have been blocked using a variety of opaque and official or unofficial techniques. Indians are increasingly using VPNs to access several of these websites. Then there’s the issue of security and surveillance. Users are flocking to VPNs as cybercrime, identity theft, and surveillance dangers increase in the country.
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But according to a computer enthusiast, user information can be stolen even via poorly designed home WiFi, let alone public WiFi. Because the data travelling over VPN is encrypted, it can’t be snooped from unprotected websites via internet connections, which is beneficial during banking transactions.
Now that VPNs are being discussed as a possible ban in India, people are concerned that it will cause them inconvenience. According to experts, blocking VPNs is not a viable solution because hackers utilise a variety of means to carry out their activities. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs recommended that VPNs be banned in India last month.
Will Banning VPN Help Curb Crimes In India?
Experts believe such a restriction will cost consumers annoyance but have no influence on cybercriminals.
Rajshekhar Rajaharia, a researcher of cyber-security says that “If there is a ban on VPN, the biggest challenge will be faced by internet companies or big corporations as they use it the most to tackle various attacks. Most ethical hackers and cyber security researchers also use VPN because they do not want their IPs to be tracked.”
Rajaharia went on to say that it will not make much of a difference to criminals as they will continue to use the TOR browser which is next to impossible to ban.
“VPN can be tracked but TOR cannot be tracked, which makes TOR a bigger challenge. While VPN or proxies are used by big companies, TOR is used by hackers, so the authorities cannot entirely stop hackers or spammers from carrying out their activity,” Rajaharia said.
What Is The Need For VPNs?
VPNs, according to ethical hacker Karan Saini, allow anyone to browse the internet without being restricted. He claims that approximately 4,000 websites are prohibited in India, regardless of their content, which could be sexual, scientific, cultural, or anything else. He claims that Indian internet users’ ability to freely explore the web is severely limited and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
Saini says that “A ban on VPN services will hamper democratic freedoms enjoyed by Indians, and which are furthered by the internet.”
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