Toronto’s answer to watching the US version of Netflix, TunnelBear, has hit three million users.
More seriously, TunnelBear is a popular “VPN” or virtual public network. A VPN extends a private network across a public network, such as the Internet. It enables a computer to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if it is directly connected to the private network, while benefiting from the functionality, security and management policies of the private network. Theoretically, an ISP monitoring the users home network would be able to see that data was being exchanged, but not what pages were being requested.
The Toronto startup recently likely received a huge boost to its usership through national soccer fans looking to watch World Cup live streams from their native country. Otherwise, those looking to access US Netflix seems to be a large draw to users as well.
Now the company has reached three million users, which is always positive for a startup. This one was founded in 2011 by Ryan Dochuk.