This one is doing the rounds and the headline is wrong in a way worth flagging, because the real number is still interesting.
The research comes from All About Cookies, surveying 1,000 US adults. The finding is that one quarter of VPN users have used a VPN to watch live sports, including out-of-market NFL games. Not one quarter of Americans. The report separately says 60 percent used a VPN in the last year and close to 70 percent have used one at some point, so the two figures are not miles apart in the end, but the headline stacks them wrong.
The part I found more telling is the comprehension gap. Around 80 percent said they know what a VPN does, but only 13 percent correctly picked every real function, and only 3 percent managed that without also picking something a VPN does not do. That gap is where people get themselves into trouble - 40 percent said they use one to keep data away from AI companies, which is not really how any of that works.
The sports angle is a rights problem, not a piracy problem. The article points at CazeTV on YouTube, which has all 104 World Cup matches free in Brazil and peaked at 12.4 million concurrent viewers on the opening Brazil game. Free, legal, high quality, and geofenced. Of course people outside Brazil went looking for a way in when their own option was three subscriptions and a blackout map.
Has anyone here actually managed a stable 4K stream through a VPN, or does the bandwidth hit knock it down to something not worth watching on a big screen?
The research comes from All About Cookies, surveying 1,000 US adults. The finding is that one quarter of VPN users have used a VPN to watch live sports, including out-of-market NFL games. Not one quarter of Americans. The report separately says 60 percent used a VPN in the last year and close to 70 percent have used one at some point, so the two figures are not miles apart in the end, but the headline stacks them wrong.
The part I found more telling is the comprehension gap. Around 80 percent said they know what a VPN does, but only 13 percent correctly picked every real function, and only 3 percent managed that without also picking something a VPN does not do. That gap is where people get themselves into trouble - 40 percent said they use one to keep data away from AI companies, which is not really how any of that works.
The sports angle is a rights problem, not a piracy problem. The article points at CazeTV on YouTube, which has all 104 World Cup matches free in Brazil and peaked at 12.4 million concurrent viewers on the opening Brazil game. Free, legal, high quality, and geofenced. Of course people outside Brazil went looking for a way in when their own option was three subscriptions and a blackout map.
Has anyone here actually managed a stable 4K stream through a VPN, or does the bandwidth hit knock it down to something not worth watching on a big screen?
