Singapore takes 9th place on the list of worst Internet pirates in the world

Here’s a list we aren’t too proud to be part of: The world’s top countries for online piracy. According to a recent study by London-based technology company Muso, Singapore came in ninth place on the list of worst Internet pirates in the world. As the only Asian country in the top ten, online users in our Little Red Dot clicked on piracy sites an average of 180 times last year.

Apparently, 2016 saw 191 billion visits to piracy sites, with global piracy visits per Internet user clocking in at 53.33. But note that this doesn’t include data from China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and North Korea, as the coverage for these countries was incomplete during the study period.

Singapore streamed in at 179.38 visits per Internet user — the number calculated by the amount of visits to piracy sites in proportion to the Internet population — while Belarus (283.83), Lithuania (269.08) and Georgia (242.58) took the top three places. For the rankings, data was taken from over 23,000 global sites that saw the highest traffic, spanning more than 200 million devices in over 220 countries.

Types of online piracy in the report included web streaming, web downloads, public and private torrents, and stream ripping. Web streaming sites were found to be the most popular, followed by public torrent sites.

QZ pointed out that despite Singapore being the world’s fourth richest country, we’re also one of the world’s worst pirates.

“It could simply be that Singaporeans are doing what they do best—being kiasu. After all, why pay when they can get it for free?”